a 



i ] 



hi i 



I .1 



1 I .1 



I 



H Hiili 




: J42L. 



igktN? 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 



OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME 
AUTHOR 

Arranged for Mission Study and the 
general reader. Every church should form 
classes to study these books. 

Country Church in the South. 

The only work on rural church condi- 
tions in the South and an authoritative 
treatment. 

Baptist Missions in the South. 

Traces the growth of Baptist missionary 
spirit and effort from the early days to the 
present. Will broaden the understanding 
and sympathies of the student. 

The Call of the South. 

The fundamental nature of American 
Home Missions is developed. Then it is 
enforced by an able treatment of some of 
its outstanding specific tasks. 

Order from the Publicity Department of 
the Baptist Home Mission Board, Healey 
Building, Atlanta, Georgia. 



Making America Christian 



ARRANGED FOR MISSION 
STUDY CLASSES AND FOR 
THE GENERAL READER 



BY 

VICTOR IRVINE MASTERS, A.M., Th.M., D.D. 

w 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLICITY OF THE HOME MISSION 
BOARD OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION; 
AUTHOR OF "THE CALL OF THE SOUTH." "THE 
HOME MISSION TASK." "BAPTIST MISSIONS LN 
THE SOUTH." "BAPTIST HOME MISSIONS." 
"COUNTRY CHURCH IN THE SOUTH." ETC. 



But ye shall receive poiver, nvhen the Holy Spirit is come upon you: 
and ye shall be my ^witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and 
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. — Acts 1:8. 

Exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which <was once 
for all delivered unto the saints. — Jude 3. 



PUBLISHED BY 

PUBLICITY DEPARTMENT OF THE 
HOME MISSION BOARD OF THE 
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 
ATLANTA, GEORGIA 






Copyright, 1921, by 
THE HOME MISSION BOARD OF THE 
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 



Tonvnley & Kysor 
Printers and Binders 
Atlanta, Georgia 



i 16 !92 
g)CI,A608705 






PREFACE. 

This is the sixth of a series of books for mission study, 
issued by the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist 
Convention. Each of the volumes has met with cordial 
favor, and several have run through two or more editions. 
There is still a sustained demand for all of these books, but 
the number of classes in churches which study Home Mis- 
sions yearly has now become so large that a new book is 
being called for annually. 

It seems fairly obvious that so large a Christian body as 
Southern Baptists should produce most of their own text- 
books on missions. The pedagogical principle involved is 
sound. It introduces the student to the problems of mis- 
sions which are common to all evangelicals through those 
particular tasks for which his own group is primarily re- 
sponsible. Further, it is only in books produced under the 
auspices of a Christian body that we may expect to find 
fearless emphasis and painstaking exposition given to those 
principles and viewpoints which are deeply imbedded in its 
faith and life. Of all people, Baptists can least afford, for 
the sake of convenience and popular conformity, to neglect 
to give attention to what is taught in the books which influ- 
ence the attitude of their people on missions and other prob- 
lems. 

To prove that America was born Christian is the concern 
of the first chapter of this book. It assembles facts which 
demonstrate that the Christian religion was the dominant 
formative force behind American life and institutions. 



6 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

America is the only nation in history of which this was true. 
The implications are tremendous of this unique origin of our 
nation. In some sense, the whole book is a plea that we shall 
live up to these implications. 

The second chapter marshalls an array of the problems 
which now challenge the nation. Some topics are here dis- 
missed with a scant two pages which merit a hundred. But 
the scope of the book seemed to call for a summary, and 
exhaustive analysis was impossible. It is an unmatched 
mass of ferment which presses upon this young giant among 
the nations, before it has passed the half of its second 
hundred years. Even the brief summary given constitutes 
a challenge to all the resources of American Christianity. 

The third chapter outlines those resources. It is opti- 
mistic. The resources of American Christianity, in numbers 
and wealth, have never been equalled. In purity of faith 
and life, American Christianity has certainly not been 
excelled in any nation. But a less cheering light is also 
turned on the picture. Material resources become a snare 
in the realm of spiritual progress, when men come to trust 
them rather than God. Our times call mightily for a Chris- 
tianity whose hidden union with God shall be its most 
trusted instrumentality. 

The fourth and fifth chapters catalog some kinds of false 
teaching and preaching against which God's people must 
contend. The author is neither a pre-millenialist nor a 
post-millenialist. But he thinks the reader will not be able 
to study, even in brief outline, the varied and determined 
anti-Christ teachings which now seek to poison and destroy 
New Testament faith, without being impressed that they 
present conditions like those Paul and other Apostolic 
writers say shall obtain in the last days. 



PREFACE 7 

The last four chapters discuss some outstanding elements 
of a constructive program for making America Christian. 
Space limitations did not permit the introduction of others 
of perhaps equal importance. 

Some special explanation of Chapter V seems necessary. 
It contains unusual material for a book on mission study. 
Of course it is not written as a contribution to scientific 
knowledge, though it has sought to conform to the proven 
facts of science. It is written, not for the exceptional 
scholar, but for the rank and file of intelligent Christians. 

We would gladly let scientific theories alone. But they 
will not let alone the faith of God's people. Therefore we 
cannot let them alone. If the average intelligent Christian 
has a faith which subtle pseudo-science may unsettle, then 
somebody must seek to show to him the emptiness of the 
claims of subtle pseudo-science. Christian writers, both in 
the press and in their books, have too long and too much 
side-stepped this subject. But it refuses to be side-stepped. 
We must face and conquer it, or else it will despoil the faith 
of multitudes. 

The present attacks of rationalism on Christianity in 
America are far more widespread and influential than is 
generally recognized. They are subtle, astute and exceed- 
ingly difficult to meet. Other false faiths attack from 
without; rationalism bores from within. Other beliefs form 
organizations of their own; rationalism, like the cuckoo, 
steals nests others have built. In the local church, it mas- 
querades as a fuller, more liberal, more "efficient" Chris- 
tianity. In the institution of learning, it uses any professor 
of biology, botany, zoology, sociology, or geology who is 
devoid of saving faith, and determined to accept God only 



8 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

on condition he can find and fathom Him in his scientific 
investigations. In popular literature, it saturates public 
thought with the suggestion that the will of the individual, 
and not God, constitutes the supreme authority to which 
man is answerable. 

What boots it if famous scientists have, as we are author- 
atively informed, largely forsaken the theories upon which 
the anti-Christ structure of rationalism was built? To the 
undergraduates and the general public the rationalistic 
college or university professor passes for a famous scientist. 
They know of no higher, and they swallow his teachings 
bodily. In recent years, many hundreds of young men and 
women, returning from college to American homes, announce 
that they cannot longer hold the faith of their parents in 
the revelation of God. They say: "Professor Blank has 
taught us better. Professor Blank knows." 

The slogan of "Business as usual ! " did not endure long in 
the World War when the public once learned that civiliza- 
tion was being destroyed. For the German ambition for 
world domination had created a condition in which no busi- 
ness counted, except as it furthered the chief business of put- 
ting down the Hun. Similarly, until American Christianity is 
safeguarded from the destructive work of rationalism, there 
is not another tenet we hold or an activity we conduct but 
must adjust itself to the task of exposing and driving out 
this great enemy of spiritual religion. 

When America entered the World War, she promptly 
placed guards to protect the water supply of our cities from 
possible poisoning by a ruthless enemy. A far more ruthless 
enemy now threatens the American people. His poison mur- 
ders men's souls; steals away God out of their lives. To 



PREFACE 9 

combat it we have all too few guards on duty. So few have 
cried aloud against this arch enemy that for an author to do 
so is to take the chance of being considered radical. But 
this author has not dared do less than raise his voice in 
warning concerning the most insidious spiritual danger in 
modern times. This he does with the fervent hope and 
prayer that God may use the thoughts set forth in these 
pages to arouse His people, so many of whom are unaware 
of the grave spiritual dangers that now threaten the soul of 
America. 

The author was compelled to write this book in the midst 
of busy activities which regularly fall to his hands in his 
service of the Home Mission Board, and without opportunity 
for that seclusion and sustained effort best suited to such an 
undertaking. While no diligence was spared toward worthy 
performance, he wishes the reader might look with leniency 
upon any apparent lack of complete orientation or of liter- 
ary finish into which this stressful essay at authorship may 
have fallen. 

He also desires to express his indebtedness to the honored 
and busy pastors and professors who have kindly read and 
criticised the manuscript. Drs. Charles W. Daniel of Atlanta, 
W. 0. Carver of Louisville, John T. Christian of New Or- 
leans, C. C. Brown of South Carolina, and Q. C. Davis of 
North Carolina, have materially added to the value of the 
work by their constructive suggestions. 

V. I. M. 

Atlanta, Georgia, December 23, 1 920. 



CONTENTS 

Preface 5 

I . Christian Foundations 13 

II. Conditions W^ich Confront American 

Christianity 29 

III. Our Resources for the Task 54 

IV. Tryinq to Be Saved Without Christ 75 

V. The Virus of Rationalism 97 

VI. Laborers for His Harvest 122 

VII. A Perennial Evangelism.. , 146 

VIII. Education and Religion 168 

IX. Baptists and Religious Education 183 

Bibliography 208 



General Grant often said to his family that the time would 
come when the South with its Anglo-Saxonism would have to 
save America. What General Grant foresaw forty years ago is 
now easily understood — that the salvation of the nation largely 
depends upon the South. The Home Mission work of the Bap- 
tists and every other denomination is infinitely more important 
since the World War than ever before. No words that man can 
utter can possibly overstress the present need of Home Missions. 
— Richard H. Edmonds, Editor of the Manufacturers Record. 

Material success is good, but only as the necessary prelimin- 
ary to better things. The measure of a nation's true success is 
the amount it has contributed to the thought, the moral energy, 
the intellectual happiness, the spiritual hope and consolation of 
mankind. — James Russell Lowell. 



CHAPTER I. 
CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS. 

People are not informed as to the facts. When we set 
before us the task of making America Christian, we are only 
proposing to hold to the course in which the providence of 
God and the faith of its founders started it. American his- 
torians generally minify the part religion had in making 
American institutions. The text-books used in our schools 
and colleges give scant attention to the vital part the faith 
of the American fathers had in moulding the form of gov- 
ernment. In this authors have done a deep injury to truth 
and to our people. They are left in ignorance concerning that 
which is most unique and fundamental among the formative 
forces of the Republic. The author's search enabled him to 
discover only three or four books which treat the subject of 
our country's debt to religion. Perhaps the best of these, 
"Christianity and the American Commonwealth", by Bishop 
C. B. Galloway, of the Southern Methodists, had lain unused 
for years on the shelf of the Carnegie Library, while thou- 
sands of volumes of less significance are called for daily. 
Bishop Galloway throws much light on the subject. Among 
the vital statements in his book, the following is worthy to 
be fixed in the memory: "A nation ashamed of its ancestry 
will be despised by its posterity". The pathos of the general 
ignorance of our people concerning the part religion played 
in forming their country is that it has resulted more from 
the waywardness and materialism of the men who have writ- 



14 MAKINK AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

ten their history than from any will of the people. Fear of 
somehow offending against the American principle of sep- 
aration of Church and State has been a reason why religion 
has been let severely alone by the average writer of Amer- 
ican history. The independence of each in its own field has 
apparently been thought to forbid an effort to show how 
each has influenced the other. But this idea can only arise 
from sad confusion of thought. 

AH governments rest on religion. All governments are 
typed and determined by their religion. Rousseau, the bril- 
liant French writer, though a skeptic, declared: "Never was 
a state founded that did not have religion for its basis*'. 
Erskine, a distinguished English jurist and orator, said: 
"Depend upon it, the world could not be held together 
without morals: nor can morals maintain their station in 
the human heart without religion". Philip Schaff, the Ger- 
man-American scholar, adds his testimony, saying: 
"The destruction of religion would be the destruction of 
morality and the ruin of the State". Alas, that his native 
country should give the world its most conspicuous illustra- 
tion of the truth! David Hume, the renowned historian, 
adds this testimony: "If you find a people without religion, 
rest assured that they do not differ from brute beasts". But 
no testimony carries more conviction to American hearts 
than that of the Father of his Country. In his "Farewell 
Address", President George Washington made this declara- 
tion: "Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined 
education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experi- 
ence both forbid us to expect that national morality can 
prevail in exclusion of religious principles". These distin- 
guished exponents of the wisdom of experience only confirm 



CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS 15 

divine wisdom as recorded in Holy Writ, which in Isaiah 
60:12 declares: "The nation and kingdom that will not 
serve Thee shall perish", and in Proverbs 13:34: "Right- 
eousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any 
people". 

Notable examples. The reign of terror which followed 
the French Revolution was greatly intensified by infidelity. 
The National Assembly passed a resolution which declared, 
"There is no God". They abolished the Sabbath, unfrocked 
the ministers of religion, turned the church buildings into 
business houses, and enthroned a wicked and beautiful 
woman as Goddess of Liberty. Then followed a carnival of 
terror and blood-letting which appalled the imagination of 
mankind. No wonder Macaulay, after tracing the record 
of nations, wrote: "Whoever does anything to depreciate 
Christianity is guilty of high treason against the civilization 
of mankind". But men who will not learn of God are deaf 
to the lessons of history. Fat with much learning, post- 
graduate in the mysteries of science and philosophy, Ger- 
many lusted for the glory and power of imperial world 
dominion. Waking up to a sense of its power, this nation 
adopted atheistic evolution and Spencer's "survival of the 
fittest", interpreting the latter to be "survival of the strong- 
est", and being confident that this could only mean Germany. 
Blinded by the lust of its heart to believe a lie, Germany 
entered on a course of conquest which ignored God and 
exalted material science and Wodan, Germany's old heathen 
God of War. Germany has fallen. Though the victorious 
Allies desire Germany to live, it staggers like a sick man in 
weakness. It is a notable demonstration that a nation that 
forgets God shall perish. Russian Bolshevism proposed to 



16 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

establish a nation without God. After two years of blood 
and butchery, which by far eclipse the orgies of the French 
Revolution, this beastly autocracy of a small group of the 
most depraved element of Russia is weaker and more inse- 
cure in its rule than it has been, and will doubtless perish. 
History, revelation and present facts assure us that the gov- 
ernment of God-renouncing wolves who oppress the 
people and drag the hearts of nations through the mire, 
shall not endure. 

God's hand in settling America. The hand of God has 
never been so manifestly shown in the settling and develop- 
ing of any nation as in America. If we eliminate from our 
history the direct and powerful influence of the Christian 
religion, we shall have little left but a set of disjointed facts 
without significance. As surely as the temple of Jerusalem 
was built by a sacred patriotism and under the benedictions 
of a favoring providence, so surely were Christian aspira- 
tions and teachings the seed thoughts of our political consti- 
tution and Christian evangelism the inspiration of American 
colonization. The Reformation in Europe had emancipated 
the State from the thraldom in which it had existed under 
the Catholic Church since Constantine and Rome had united 
Church and State. But it had stopped short of securing lib- 
erty of conscience. The pope was unhorsed in Northeastern 
Europe, but the king still acted as the guide of men's con- 
sciences. Hardship and persecution followed for non-con- 
formists in France, England and Germany. The Huguenots, 
for example, were persecuted in France for 200 years. Con- 
cerning their difference of belief from that of the State 
religion, the Jesuits said: "Crush these things out of the 
Huguenots. Crush the Huguenots themselves". This im- 



CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS 17 

placable hate of the Jesuits found expression on St. Bar- 
tholemew's Day in a wholesale butchery of the Huguenots 
which will always be a measure of the evil of Jesuitism. 

God picked the settlers. Such was the oppression in 
Europe. It made the noblest and best men and women 
whom civilization had produced anxious to get away into 
the American wilderness where they would face wild men 
and animals, but not the infuriated animosity of religious 
autocracy. This autocracy had made men who professed 
to know God, more to be feared than were the savages and 
brutes in the American wilderness. It is not surprising that 
such a people should set forth the worship and service of God 
as their purpose in establishing colonies in America. It is not 
surprising that the charter of the settlers at Jamestown, in 
1606, should set forth that their purpose was "to propa- 
gate the Christian religion". It is not surprising that the 
compact of the Plymouth settlers, in 1620, drawn up on 
board of the ship before they landed on the bleak New 
England shores, opened with the expression, "In the name 
of God, Amen". Nor is it odd that their first act, when they 
landed on the historic Plymouth Rock, was to bow in prayer 
and thanksgiving. It is not surprising that the colonial seal 
of Massachusetts, adopted eight years after the landing, bore 
the effigy of an Indian, with the motto in his mouth, "Come 
over and help us". Deep religious conviction and purpose 
characterized the Huguenots who came in at Charleston, and 
the Scotch who entered at Philadelphia and the various 
ports southward. This was the motive which brought the 
Quakers and many of the Dutch. 

God gave a great country to His people. Never was a 
nation settled by a body of people so strong and admirable. 



18 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Adventure or lust of conquest have been predominant 
motives in colonizing the waste places of earth. They have 
enlisted mostly the reckless and the unattached. The Span- 
ish settlements to the south and the French to the north of 
those set up by the American Fathers, were examples of 
this. They were destined to have little influence in the 
future of America, but God strengthened the persecuted 
argonauts of conscience, who came with wives and children 
and Bibles and preachers and prayers, to subdue and set on 
its feet the greatest land on which the sun ever shone. It 
took men of this stripe to endure the hardness and rigor of 
the wilderness, to overcome the lurking savages, to subdue 
the wilds to husbandry, to wrest the colonies from the op- 
pression of the mother country, and to write for their 
national law a constitution which has been the wonder and 
admiration of the greatest minds of the earth. No such 
clear evidence of God's providential hand was ever shown 
in the establishment of any other nation, except in His deal- 
ings with the Jews in their Palestinian home. And such a 
country it was to which God brought these persecuted pil- 
grims! Large, in the temperate zone, fertile, rich beyond 
dreams in forests and minerals, well watered, it was destined 
to become and now is by far the wealthiest land of the 
earth, the home of the freest and most resourceful and 
intelligent people. 

Religious laws. Their faith was the greatest concern of 
these settlers. What would they do concerning their faith, 
when they came to making laws for the control of their 
colonies? Should they neglect to say anything about it? 
Surely so great a thing as religion must be safeguarded in 
the laws that control society, but how can you safeguard 



CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS 19 

without regulating? They did not see how. They had fled 
from the persecution which necessarily grows out of regu- 
lating religion by law, but they proceeded to make a large 
number of laws to regulate religion, and the penalties for dis- 
obedience included death. Some of our Baptist fathers in 
their own experience found that they included imprisonment, 
banishment and whipping. President George Washington 
himself was arrested for breaking the Sabbath law. Return- 
ing from a tour through Connecticut, on a Saturday in 
November, 1 789, and having missed his way, he had to 
ride a few miles on Sunday morning to reach the town 
where he expected to attend church service. On his way 
he was stopped by a "tithing" man, who demanded to know 
why he was traveling on Sunday. It was only after long 
explanation by the President and a promise to go no farther 
than the church, that the constable allowed him to go for- 
ward.* The early colonists who had lived in the mother 
country under the union of the state and a religion which 
they did not profess, established in American colonial gov- 
ernments under which there was the closest union between 
the state and the religion which they did profess. The free- 
dom of conscience which had been denied to them in the 
old country they denied to others in the new country. 

How light and liberty were found. It was difficult for 
them to see how religion can get along without being but- 
tressed by the law. Nobody else had seen it in a way to 
grapple men's minds, since the time when Constantine and 
the early ecclesiastics disobeyed Christ's teaching, "Render 
unto Caesar the things thta are Caesar's and unto God the 
things that are God's". Martin Luther did much in the Re- 



*"American State Papers", page 38. 



20 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

formation. But he did not understand religious liberty. Some 
Baptists had been preaching in England and on the Conti- 
nent, but they had no influence with the powers that ruled, 
no prestige with a worldly public opinion. In God's good 
providence, some of these same obscure Baptists came to 
America. Where the loadstone of liberty was, Baptists were 
sure to be drawn. Soon they saw that liberty was not as 
thorough-going in the Colonies as they had hoped. In the 
realm of conscience it had no thoroughfare. Unlike the 
great majority of their fellow colonists, they promptly saw 
what was the matter. The hour of the Baptist opportunity 
had struck. Before twenty years had passed after the 
landing of the Pilgrims, the rightfulness of Sunday laws 
was one of the leading subjects for debate in America, and 
Roger Williams was the outstanding champion against such 
laws. 

Baptist primacy in religious liberty. To Virginia, chiefly 
to Virginia Baptists, belongs the honor of disestablishing re- 
ligion in America. To Roger Williams, a Baptist, belongs 
the honor of first establishing, in Rhode Island, a common- 
wealth upon the principle of the entire separation of Church 
and State. "Roger Williams", declares the historian Ban- 
croft, "was first person in modern Christendom to assert the 
doctrine of the liberty of conscience". Through more than 
a score of years, toward the close of the eighteenth century, 
the battle raged in this country for religious liberty. It ex- 
tended among the Colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia, 
but the heat of the conflict was in Virginia, and the Baptists 
were the fearless, determined, untiring and always consistent 
leaders of the fight. God raised up influential friends for 
these Baptists. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick 



CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS 21 

Henry and others came to their support, and at last religious 
liberty was written into the national Constitution and reiter- 
ated explicitly in the First Amendment. In his re- 
cent address, during the Southern Baptist Convention, on 
the capitol steps at Washington, Dr. George W. Truett, after 
eloquently setting forth the primacy of the Baptists in win- 
ning these great privileges for America, added: "I take it 
that every man informed on the subject, whatever his re- 
ligious faith, will be willing to pay tribute to our Baptist 
people as being the chief instrumentality in God's hands in 
winning the battle in America for religious liberty". Because 
the truth always helps and its repression always hurts every- 
body concerned, we could wish the desire expressed by this 
distinguished Baptist minister might be realized. Baptists 
can get along without it quite as well as other denomina- 
tions can afford to withhold from them credit for this out- 
standing service of theirs to the nation and to every Chris- 
tian body. 

Early law makers and religions. The closer we scrutinize 
early America, the more conclusive becomes the proof that 
the formative force of its institutions was not only religious, 
but Christian. In its meeting at Philadelphia, the Continen- 
tal Congress humbled itself on its knees in prayer before 
God, beseeching Him for wisdom and guidance through 
Christ the Redeemer. It was proposed before the Congress, 
though not adopted, that the seal of the country should bear 
a picture of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, surrounded 
by the words: "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God". 
For eight years, during the Revolution, this Congress ap- 
pointed days of national fasting and prayer, and urged the 
people to repentance for their sins, and to reformation and 



22 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Christian faith. At the beginning of the struggle, it expressed 
the desire to have the "people of all ranks and degrees duly 
impressed with a solemn sense of the superintending provi- 
dence of God, and of their duty, in all of their lawful enter- 
prises, to rely on His aid and direction". It called on the 
people "to repent, and through the mediation of Jesus Christ, 
obtain pardon and forgiveness". What the Congress did in 
Philadelphia to honor God and encourage faith, ministers 
of the gospel were forward to do among the people and 
in the camps of the Revolutionary Armies. As one student 
of the period says: "The preachers of the Revolution were 
the secret of that moral energy which sustained the Republic 
in its national weakness against the superior members and 
discipline and all the powers of England". In another vol- 
ume the author has recounted how Dr. Richard Furman, a 
distinguished Baptist preacher of the Revolutionary period, 
was sent by the civil authorities on a tour through South 
Carolina and into the American camps to preach to the 
people. He so stirred the patriotism of the people and sol- 
diers that Lord Cornwallis offered a reward of five thousand 
pounds for his head. The power of those preachers had 
behind it the spirit of the National Congress, and the Con- 
gress in turn only sought to voice the recognized spirit and 
purpose of the people of the nation concerning religious 
faith. 

The Constitution and religion. There are those who would 
have us believe that the Federal Constitution proposed a 
nation that should have no concern with religion. They 
point to the fact that the name of God is not mentioned in 
the document. They would have us observe that the two 
references to religion are rather of a negative character. 



CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS 23 

The first reference to religion declares that "no religious test 
shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or 
public trust under the United States". The second is the 
First Amendment, which our Baptist fathers were so influ- 
ential in securing: "Congress shall make no law respecting 
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof, or abridging freedom of speech, or of the press, or 
the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to peti- 
tion the government for a redress of grievances". The Con- 
stitution did not create a nation or its religion or institutions. 
The purpose of the two references to religion was not to ex- 
clude religion, but to equalize the opportunities of religious 
bodies. It was not anti-Christian, but anti-sectarian. 
The Constitution-makers had the task of organizing 
a general government for the nation out of materials already 
in hand. This government was to do what the States could 
not do so well for themselves. The States, as abundant 
testimony affirms, were committed to the idea of Christian 
faith as a formative force, to a degree and with a unanimity 
never elsewhere equalled in history. Since there was to be 
separation of Church and State, the Constitution had no 
business to legislate on religion, except to make sure fair 
play on the part of the government itself. If the Constitu- 
tion had not a single word about religion, law and reason 
would yet bid us seek its religious character among the 
States and the people who formed it, a people who were 
religious by profession and through their ancestors. 

National principles which come from God. The limits of 
this chapter will not allow us to study the great principles 
of government which our Constitution announced to man- 
kind, for the first time in history. But it is pertinent to re- 



24 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

mark that what our Lord Jesus Christ does for the individual 
soul in setting it free and magnifying its worth, the Amer- 
ican Constitution seeks to set forth in terms of the funda- 
mental law of a nation. No autocrats willed the Republic; 
the soul of a people willed it. No king was to be obeyed, 
but law was to be obeyed. And the people themselves made 
the law. They are the sovereigns. By separating the gov- 
ernment into three departments, each independent and equal 
in authority, it was sought to prevent the possibility of 
centralization and autocracy on the part of some ambitious 
President. By specifically reserving certain inalienable rights 
to individuals, it was intended to protect the single man 
against the persecution or injustice of the majority, should 
the majority be misguided enough to invade his rights. 
These safeguards of the Constitution are now openly flouted 
in America by certain classes. They find the Constitution 
too conservative to represent their advanced ideas. The 
majority rules in America, but it rules according to law and 
with respect for certain rights of the individual. If these 
safeguards should be taken away v/e would no longer have 
a republican democracy. We would have a social democ- 
racy, in which the closely organized minority, by agitation 
and propaganda, could often put over their selfish schemes 
to the undoing of unorganized majorities. For our present 
purpose we only remark that the Constitution which the 
American fathers gave us is far more in consonance with the 
religion of Christ than any of the socialistic propositions 
which now harass the public mind, just as it was far in ad- 
vance of any similar compact which preceded it. England's 
great statesman, Gladstone, said of it: "It is the greatest 
piece of work ever struck off at a given time by the brain 



CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS 25 

and purpose of men", and the world-famed William Pitt, 
when he read it, exclaimed: "It will be the wonder and 
admiration of all future generations and the model of all 
future Constitutions". It becomes American Christians to 
defend it and be proud of it. For never on this earth was 
the fundamental law of another nation so shot through with 
that spirit of peace, good will, justice and righteousness, 
which our Lord came to establish. 

Views of eminent jurists. The views of early statesmen 
and jurists on the position of Christianity in America are of 
great value, because they were in the best position to judge 
of the facts, and their position in society is such that they 
may be expected to understate rather than magnify the 
facts about Christianity. James Madison, who probably 
gave more effort toward establishing religious liberty than 
any other statesman, declared: "Religion and government 
will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed 
together". Daniel Webster said: "There is nothing that we 
can look for with more certainty than the general principle 
that Christianity is a part of the law of the land". Chief 
Justice Brewer wrote a book, the thesis of which is that 
America is a Christian nation. Chief Justice Corley, writing 
on constitutional limitations, says: "The Christian religion 
was always recognized in the common law, and so far as 
that law continues to be the law of the land, the fundamental 
principles of that religion must continue to be recognized". 
Judge F. W. Dent, once dean of Columbia University Law 
School, declares: "Our national development has in it the 
best and purest elements of vital Christianity. Should we 
tear Christianity from our law, we should rob our law of its 
fairest jewels, arrest its growth and unfit it as a vehicle for 



26 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

progress". Chief Justice Kent says: 'We are a Christian 
people and the morality of the country is deeply grafted on 
Christianity". Our whole social fabric and legal procedure 
is shot through with evidences that this country was born a 
Christian country. 

Tremendous implications. What does the fact that Amer- 
ica was born Christian mean to us? We are the inheritors 
of a country whose fundamental law was framed under the 
guiding hand of a people whose spirit and purpose were 
Christian. The passion of their souls was for civil and 
religious liberty. They safeguarded those liberties in the 
greatest and most beneficent Constitution under which the 
people of any nation ever lived. Under it, they developed 
initiative and resourcefulness. Freed from the age-long clog 
of State interference in religion, they developed the highest 
order of Christianity the world has seen, by the witness of au- 
thorities in the nations themselves. They proceeded to unfold 
in the nation the greatest wealth any nation on earth ever 
possessed. And we are the inheritors of it all. This unmatched 
heritage of American Christianity from our past carries with 
it obligations that are staggering. We are the only nation 
that was born Christian. We are the first country to be 
settled by Christian men and women with religious purpose. 
Our Constitution provides that religious liberty which the 
oppressed peoples of earth had through the centuries longed 
for in vain. Our fundamental law exalts the individual 
citizen and his rights, instead of exalting the power of the 
State. Under these beneficent laws, Christianity has had 
its greatest development in America. With these unex- 
ampled advantages in the great Republic, for Christian 
bodies to contemplate losing the nation to the forces of 



CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS 27 

atheistic philosophy and outbreaking sin, is unthinkable. 
To do so, we would first have to forsake our faith in the 
power of Christ to save men, and practically confess despair 
that this faith of the Christ is powerless to lift up other 
nations far less advantageously circumstanced than we are. 
The religious origin and history of America binds every true 
disciple at all costs to the task of winning this land to Christ 
afresh in every new generation. It binds us to maintain 
here a spiritual power-house adequate to generate currents 
that shall light the whole world. 

America's soul pictured in marble. On the rocky summit 
overlooking the bay where the Mayflower first anchored, 
stands a magnificent monument. On the corners of the 
pedestal are four figures in a sitting posture, representing 
Law, Morality, Freedom, and Education. Standing far 
above on the lofty shaft of granite is a majestic figure sym- 
bolizing Faith, holding an open Bible in one hand, and with 
the other uplifted, pointing far away to the throne of the 
unseen God. What a sublime conception! How true to 
the facts of our heroic history. The open Bible is the Magna 
Charta of America, and that uplifted hand, symbolizing 
trust in the God of our fathers, is the condition of our 
national stability and continued prosperity. 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER I. 

Has popular history given the facts about Christianity in found- 
ing America? 

Quote authorities, showing that governments rest on religion. 

How was this exhibited in the French Revolution, and in Ger- 
many's part in the World War? How is it being shown in 
Russian Bolshevism? 

Give evidence of God's hand in founding America. 

Show how God picked the early settlers. 

Compare America's settlers with those of other countries. 

Show how the early settlers came to make religious laws. 

How did they get better light on the subject? 

Give facts showing Baptist primacy in securing religious liberty 
in America. 

How did early law makers in America view religion? 

Discuss the Constitution and religion. 

Show that American principles of Government are from God. 

Quote eminent jurists on this subject. 

What implications follow the fact that America was born 
Christian? 



CHAPTER II. 

CONDITIONS WHICH CONFRONT AMERICAN 
CHRISTIANITY. 

Must seek to measure them. It is difficult to give a bird's- 
eye view of our own day. We look at the past through a 
perspective; but the present covers the whole horizon. The 
happenings of yesterday are molded into a record; but the 
issues of today are still plastic. We objectify the past from 
without, but must seek the meaning of the present from 
within. There are times, however, when we must measure 
the forces which are making our own day. We now live in 
such a time. The forces which press upon society, challeng- 
ing attention and decision at its hands were never so many, 
so powerful or so protentious as they are today. In opening 
a work on making America Christian, designed for Christian 
students, it seems necessary to give an outline of those 
forces. It cannot be more than an outline, and it can seek 
to cover only those parts of the field of universal unrest 
that appear to be most germane to the purpose of Christian- 
izing America. 

Our best thought demanded. Such an outline must nec- 
essarily be a diagnosis of conditions which today confront 
American Christianity. It cannot be other than a bill of 
particulars concerning the ailment of a sick world. It can 
do no less than invite the student to consider some problems 
that are engaging some of the best brains of the world. The 
author could wish to hold out to the timid a more inviting 



30 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

prospect, but is unable to do so without forsaking the plan 
and purpose of these chapters. The condition of the world 
at present is an appeal to Christian men and women to give 
themselves to deep and earnest thought. Greedy and pas- 
sionate pursuit of pleasure by the masses, and unsanctified 
intellectualism among the learned few, are threatening the 
things Christian men and women hold dearest. We cannot 
by praising ethics save the brutish man from his mire. But 
we can only be faithful to Christ by refusing to accept these 
conditions and to allow them to continue. We cannot af- 
ford to give less than our best thought and best deeds to 
saving lost souls and safeguarding a sore beset civilization. 
The unrest of our times is a clarion call to Home Missions. 
Home Missions seeks to make America Christian. In order 
that it may accomplish this great result, the student of 
Home Missions must understand the nature and power of 
the forces at work to destroy vital religion. We cannot 
conquer our country for Christ without knowing something 
of the armies of evil which Satan is directing against us. 
To understand the might of the forces which operate against 
our holy faith, is to be able to put before American Chris- 
tians a correct measure of the devotion and deeds by which 
we may hope to make America Christian. America was 
born Christian, but it must be made Christian afresh in every 
generation, or else it will forsake God. This chapter will 
show that it now lacks much of being Christian in any true 
sense. 

Not a time of deep thinking. There is in America a more 
general diffusion of education than ever before. We spend 
millions on public education and have many more millions 
in educational plants and endowments. We quickly give 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 31 

attention to any evidence of public illiteracy and seek to 
correct the lack. But educators are telling us that not all 
the approved methods and appliances enable them to ac- 
complish certain necessary results with youth to-day that 
were once attained with fewer appliances and poorer meth- 
ods. There is something in the spirit of our times that seems 
to distract the minds even of students daily exposed to the 
educational process. But our observation takes in a broadei 
field. The general public is more superficial in thought 
to-day than where the American people of other days. The 
pace of life has quickened beyond precedent. Material 
science has performed its wonders. The boy in his 'teens 
may now travel around the earth, expose his eyes to more 
sights and his senses to more strange and unusual thrills 
than normally come to a man of three times his age. He 
may crowd into his brief span of years the experiences of a 
lifetime, without learning the inner meaning of a singk one 
of them. The intense pace gives no time for reflection. 
Experience without reflection and meditation does not feed 
the soul ; its lessons are rubbed out by the hasty succession of 
new events and sensations. The printing press turns out more 
grist than ever. But most of us get our news from the 
headlines, and our serious reading — do most of us get it at 
all? The public libraries and the news stands do little to 
indicate it. 

Chloroforming the soul. The train and the automobile 
carry us rapidly across the country, but do not give us 
time to read the pages of the book of nature. Once 
nature spoke to men's souls and pointed toward God. Now 
we have no time to hear its voice. With impartial prompt- 
ness and facility a machine gives us the music of the opera 



32 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

star or the latest jazz, and incidentally relieves us of the 
trouble of mastering even the simplest principles of music 
for ourselves. The moving picture with equal facility 
flashes before our eyes "canned" theatrical effects and re- 
quires no more of us than that we shall hold our eyes open, 
while it turns from the reel the portrayal of a life that is 
usually unreal, and steals much time we might have given 
to useful deeds or thoughts. It is our custom to felicitate 
ourselves on the wonders of our material civilization. But 
it is stealing many precious things from men. One of them 
is the use of their brains and hearts in serious thought and 
meditation. While it has created conditions the mastery of 
which requires straight thinking and high purpose, it has 
stolen from many the habit of thinking and their sense of 
the reality of God. When we reflect how general is the 
public exaltation of our material civilization, and how few 
seem to dream that there can be any danger in the machine- 
driven life of to-day, we may well be alarmed. Man is almost 
infinitely bigger than his machine and the satisfactions it 
provides for the body, but not so long as he lets it chloro- 
form his soul. 

A worse enemy. Intense preoccupation with life on the 
surface is not the only thing that tends to leave fallow the 
cultivation of the deeper resources of mind and soul. For 
more than twenty years there has emanated from certain in- 
tellectuals in this country, mainly from teachers of science 
in colleges and universities, doctrines concerning God and 
man the general acceptance of which would be the undoing 
of Christian faith and the scrapping of the Bible. Science 
has great vogue in the public mind, and we would not take 
from it any prestige it merits. But when high priests of 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 33 

science enter the field of the spiritual life and assume to re- 
construct the Deity by their hypotheses, blithely waving 
aside the Bible, or such parts of it as run athwart their 
theories, it is time for the people of God to get awake and 
to examine the strong reasons of the anti-Christian school 
of scientists. Not finding God in their laboratory experi- 
ments nor their materialistic philosophy, they have either 
ruled Him out of His creation, or hidden Him away from 
hungry- hearted men behind the "smoke screen" of their wis- 
dom. On the unproven hypothesis of evolution, they have 
put doubt and uncertainty into the minds of many thousands 
of American students. Reasoning logically from their un- 
proven theory of the origin of man, they rule out the vicari- 
ous atonement of Christ. If man is perfectible by evolution, 
the Fall recorded in Genesis is a myth, for evolution allows 
man to "fall" upwards only. So is the saviorship of Christ 
a myth, for no Savior is needed where the grace of evolution 
suffices. Christ becomes only a good man, an example. Our 
gospel of redemption through the shed blood of the precious 
Son of God no longer has place. 

We must meet this foe. Elsewhere it will be necessary to 
study this onslaught on Christian faith. I mention it here 
only to point to it as the most insidious and dangerous 
factor among all the current conditions in America, as they 
relate to the faith and character of the people of this nation. 
Gladly would I refrain from writing of this subtle foe. It 
is highly placed. In unlearned public opinion it has acquired 
the sanctity of mystery and of learned assumption. Ap- 
parently most ministers, even, think it is discreet to meet its 
assaults with silence. It does its work stealthily. Some good 
men may question the wisdom of giving prominence in this 



34 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

place to what they may think is not affecting our people in 
general. "Let sleeping dogs lie", they say. Others may 
question the fitness of the theme for a mission study book. 
In reply the author declares that the "dogs" he has in mind 
are not sleeping. They are very much awake. They are 
freely giving tongue to their chase after the hearts and 
hopes of men in the best and most conspicuous hunting 
preserves in America. It would be cowardly to dodge the 
issue of challenging the right of scientific teachers and writ- 
ers to take away the faith of our people. That is what the 
dogma of evolution will do, if it is to have its way. With its 
offspring, rationalism, new theology, and salvation by en- 
vironment, it is already on the job with power in many sec- 
tions of the country. If to any it seems rash for a writer not 
particularly versed in science to enter the field of science for 
a tilt, we reply that such is not our purpose. The scientific 
enemies of Christ has stealthily invaded the family of God's 
children. They purpose to despoil them of their most precious 
possession. It would be a poor child of such a Savior who 
would not defend the faith against devouring wolves. It is 
with confidence that I ask the student to study with me, while 
I present in a future chapter a defense against the leaven of 
rationalism. 

Religion by law. The student is doubtless familiar with 
the various manifestations recently of the movement toward 
outward uniformity in religion. This movement necessarily 
slants toward lessening the contents of faith. It also slants 
toward making the representatives of the unionized "Protest- 
ant" forces a political power. Jesus said: "My kingdom is 
not of this world", and "Render unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's". The 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 35 

various union movements tend to lose certainty of testimony 
concerning the spiritual things of God, which are "not of this 
world", and to become intensely concerned about the social 
improvement they may be able to secure by legislation. 
The Union Movement among the denominations purposes 
to dictate legislation. Once in a while, one hears as their 
apologetic the claim that only thus can evangelical bodies 
meet the subversive political activities of the Romanists. 
Catholic activities are dangerous and require con- 
stant vigilance on the part of all who love American liberty. 
But they are not to be met by "Protestants" setting up a 
similar machine for coercing the government. When Prot- 
estants cease protesting against the unholy ambition of 
Rome to rule the State, they lose their right to this name. 
That the Federal Council of Churches has in it potentialities 
for dictating to the consciences of men was shown in a meet- 
ing in Philadelphia, in December, 1908, in which this body, 
claiming to "represent thirty denominations and eighteen 
million communicants", voted to back up legislation to 
require Sunday observance, and overwhelmingly defeated 
a resolution accepting the Seventh-Day Adventists and 
others who observe the Seventh-Day Sabbath on the grounds 
of conscience. American evangelicism escaped a great fall 
when the boastful and arrogant Inter-church Movement col- 
lapsed. But the forces of unionism are not defeated, though 
considerably battered! Their activities may be expected to 
continue to play down the spiritual contents of faith and 
play up material well-being and righteousness by law. They 
constitute one of the most demoralizing influences which 
spiritual religion now confronts. 



36 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Unassimilated immigration. Forsaking its traditional aloof- 
ness from Europe, America fought in France to preserve 
human liberty. Since the war, our country has found itself 
the field of unprecedented unrest. The material for this 
ferment we partly inherited from the war. Partly it came 
as a result of forces at work through a longer period. They 
were intensified and brought to fuller revealment through 
the strains of war. From the war itself European political 
ferment gained added power to influence American thought. 
Ten years ago, the Bolshevistic unheaval in Russia could 
not have produced a reaction in America comparable to that 
which its agents have brought about within the last few 
years. In the present torn condition of human society, this 
monstrous political creed actually threatens to engulf other 
European countries, and it has the assurance to maintain a 
far-reaching propaganda in the United States. We 
believed America could stand any and all strains. We 
troubled ourselves little about the volume and kind of im- 
migration which congested our ports and built up great nests 
of unassimilated aliens in our cities and industrial centers. 
We were too busy making money to think whether these 
people would make good American citizens. We laughed 
at men who spoke words of warning. Scarcely a newspaper 
in the land carried editorials or articles of warning as to 
any danger. It was not the fashion and the public was not 
anxious to be taught. The pulpit, for the most part, ap- 
peared to be unaware of danger, as were the other agencies 
for educating public opinion. In some pulpits, this greatest 
human hegira of the age, was constantly held up as an 
evidence of God's favoring providence. God was thrusting 
the ends of the earth to our very doors so that we would 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 37 

evangelize and Christianize them. At the same time not 
all the missionary effort of American evangelical bodies 
combined was more than touching the edges of this great 
polyglot mass of men, women and children. 

An unjustifiable optimism. Largely from American unwis- 
dom in respect to immigration before the World War, have 
come the problems which now give a sense of insecurity 
concerning American institutions. Immigrant masses came 
to get our dollars, who cared not for America. American 
captains of industry exploited their labor and cared not 
for the immigrant. God was not in all their thoughts. A 
mine was being laid for future troubles. Uplift agencies 
theorized and made plans which they usually suggested the 
churches would execute. The Christian bodies did some 
real curative work of their own. But it was pitifully small 
in proportion to the need, and the soul of the nation at 
large was asleep. The facts about anti-Americanism among 
the alien groups brought out by the World War have 
awakened the Christian bodies and enlisted in a larger way 
private and governmental action toward Americanizing the 
new-comers. There is a great and hopeful work to be 
done. It is fundamentally religious. Its accomplishment 
and such a revision of our immigration laws as shall sternly 
weed out anarchists and radical socialists are essential, if we 
are to preserve American faith and institutions. Alien immi- 
grants have no inherent right to American freedom and citi- 
zenship. If they are not willing to become real Americans, 
they should be deported. 

Lawlessness. Our legislative bodies are continually mak- 
ing new laws. Among them are some which promise much 
for the public welfare. National prohibition will not make 



38 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

men Christians, but it will put out of business the most cor- 
rupt political influence that ever sought to control American 
votes and legislation. It will reduce crime and for many 
will "make it easy to do right and hard to do wrong", a 
formula which is rightly valued by moral reformers, though 
it falls short of expressing the spirit and purpose of Chris- 
tianity. But the need of our country is not more 
laws so much as it is more respect for laws now in existence. 
We need the kind of character among our people that will 
lead them to obey the laws of the land and to demand 
with all of their power that others shall obey them. A 
comparison between America and other countries shows 
that we have more lawlessness than any of the other so- 
called Christian nations. This cheapness of human life is 
our national reproach. The number of homicides is larger 
than in any other civilized country. Lynching, especially 
of Negroes, is of frequent occurrence and endangers the 
organized life of society more than murder endangers it. 
In lynching their victims, the individuals who compose the 
mob present the picture of section of the community taking 
the law into its own hands, in defiance of laws made by 
the whole community, that wisely provide orderly processes 
of trial for even the most guilty wretch. The mob lynchers 
lynch the law no less surely than their victim. A search 
for the sources of this spirit of lawlessness will take us back 
to the home. The right exercise of parental authority will 
develop in the child proper respect for law. 

A lack of educational methods. Modern educational 
methods have given comfort to parents in weak senti- 
mentalism in dealing with children. According to these, a 
child must not be told not to do some wrong thing he feels 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 39 

inclined to do. He must be charmed into wanting to do 
something else that will not be injurious. Children and 
college students need to learn to do and study things they 
do not like. Men who have not learned this cannot master 
the issues of life. Bear with a quotation from a prom- 
inent pedagog. Speaking before a summer school for 
teachers, he said: "The psychology of the child's 
mind is innately the psychology of the adult mind. Fill 
the mind of the child with the Emersonian doctrine of the 
divine discontent with evil. Supply it with the opposite 
good, instead of giving a mandate against evil." It sounds 
well, but it is not true to human nature and needs, nor 
true to divine revelation. The pedagog may find a "Don't" 
to the child contrary to his psychology, but the Lord God 
Almighty found it suited to the need of erring humanity. 
Eight of the Ten Commandments begin with 'Thou shalt 
not." Leading pedagogs say that they have been mis- 
understood at this point. They say that teachers who have 
proposed to guide children by the sentimental psychology 
just outlined have failed to understand it. However, the 
public will hold the pedagogic expert to account for filling 
school teachers with theories concerning the child mind so 
obscure that the average teacher at once seems to begin to 
misinterpret them. Parents had better hearken to the wis- 
dom of Solomon concerning the use of the rod than ta 
that of the school mistress who has thus interpreted or mis- 
interpreted the philosophy of modern pedagogy. The words 
of the Bible about the uses of chastisement are of more value 
than those of savants whose doctrines thousands of school 
teachers have tried to follow. If we would hark back to 
common sense and to an old-time faith in Holy Writ, it would 
be better for us. 



40 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Responsibility of the home. Unrestrained self-will in a 
child and unchecked self-assertion in the school boy and 
college student pave the way for the lawless citizen. Not 
even a virile gospel can hope to cure in society an over- 
weening self-will which has been nursed from the cradle 
to manhood. To cure men who mock at the prohibitions 
of law and interpret liberty as license, we need the gospel 
of Christ. But we need also teachers and parents who 
have the intelligence to see that such pedagogics as that 
described above is essentially anti-Christian; that the 
teacher who practices it may have learned about children 
from scientific men, but he has not learned from God. Still 
the home must bear the brunt of responsibility for the 
spirit of lawlessness. There is a falling off of the restraints 
of parental authority over children that is so general that 
the work of the teacher is made difficult, sometimes almost 
impossible. Recently there have been revolts against au- 
thority by almost the entire student body in different col- 
leges in the South. In some instances, the student body 
was almost broken up. If this spirit of insubordination 
sweeps the college student off his feet, how may we hope 
for respect for authority among the unlettered? To dis- 
cover and correct the lack in the American home that 
seems to allow children to drink in the spirit of lawlessness 
almost with their mother's milk is to deal with lawlessness 
in the citizen where our efforts will be most effective. 

Radical Socialism. Radical Socialism is anarchy. Both 
of these are Bolshevism. Each follows the theory of Karl 
Marx, whose creed was set forth in a book written more 
than fifty years ago. Marxianism, Bolshevism, radical 
Socialism, and Anarchy teach the overthrow of organized 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 41 

society by violence and revolution. They know nothing 
of citizens, of middle-class people. Everybody is either 
"bourgeois" or "proletariat." They hate and plot to destroy 
the "bourgeoisie", and promise to their dupes an earthly 
heaven for the "proletariat" when they have overturned 
society and have taken all its wealth for their own con- 
sumption. The student may verify this description from 
many authorities now available. Radical Socialism was at 
work in America before the World War. From certain 
urban nests it maintained its propaganda of hate and envy, 
but American people did not take it seriously. They laughed 
at the antics of the motley Industrial Workers of the World, 
and with fine insight named them the "I won't-work bri- 
gade". Since the War, with the addition of an extensive Bol- 
shevistic propaganda maintained here, radical Socialism has 
become a more serious factor. One may humor a crank, 
but he smashes a venomous reptile. 

Anarchy in action. At high noon, on Wall Street, in 
New York, a few days before these lines were written, a 
powerful bomb was exploded before the firm of a great 
financial magnate and just opposite the national sub- 
treasury building and stock exchange, where billions of 
money are kept. Evidence showed that it was the work of 
anarchists. Thirty-five persons were killed and hundreds 
injured. Wreckage piled high in the streets, along with the 
bodies of the dead and wounded. In front of the sub- 
treasury stands a pedestal of a statute of George Washing- 
ton. Chipped and marred by the flying debris, this heroic 
figure of Americanism looked down upon the havoc. The 
revered past, outraged by brutishness of the disciples of Karl 
Marx, peered mutely upon the one frankly devilish plague 



42 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

spot of the present, while down through obscure streets 
dodged and cringed the slinking figure of a cowardly 
fanatic, seeking to get back to the lair of plotting 
human whelps, among whom he would be greeted as a hero. 
Insignificant in himself, he personifies in its most offensive 
form the sum of those forces which have had their susten- 
ance and liberties from the country which George Wash- 
ington and the Revolutionary Fathers made possible, only 
to use them as affording an opportunity to destroy the 
open-hearted land which offered them liberty and safety. 

Efforts at class control. Bomb throwers will not control 
America, though their presence and purpose offers a gloomy 
angle from which to look at our boasted modern civiliza- 
tion. There is, however, a tendency in this country toward 
class organization for the purpose of selfish class advance- 
ment. This is dangerous. Its success would be the de- 
struction of American liberties. Organized industrial labor 
and organized capital together make up not more than 
one-fifth of the population, but their activities, each for its 
own interest, have in recent years caused more trouble to 
America than all the other people of the country combined. 
Each of these classes is organized: the public is not. Other 
classes generally vote for America first, and for their own 
class interest second. It is beginning to be believed 
that the classes named vote for themselves first and the 
country second. "The people be damned", was once the 
attitude of capital. The profane slogan has more recently 
been credited to the mouth of a labor leader, but the 
people will not be damned. They will not turn their coun- 
try over to be mulcted through class legislation for any 
special group. Neither capital nor organized labor ihows a 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 43 

proper regard for the welfare of the general public. In 
connection with the aspirations of socialistic classes, there 
has arisen a group of intellectual dilletantes who offer a 
sorry spectacle. President Roosevelt, in his book, "The 
Great Adventure", invented the term "Parlor Bolshevist" 
to describe these persons. In addition to using their gifts 
to dress up in white the beastliness of Bolshevism, they 
have developed a school of criticism against the American 
Constitution. For instance, the Constitution guarantees the 
rights of property. But these theorists favor a program by 
which property may be legally taken away from those who 
own it and given to those who do not. For this and simr 
ilar reasons, they hold that the Constitution is out of date. 
Industrial problems. The great mass of American labor- 
ing men are honest and good citizens. To them the specter 
of Bolshevism is as ugly as to the rest of us. Industrial 
labor, however, has not always been wisely led or advised. 
It has also suffered from the insidious efforts of the paid 
agents of radicalism to get control of its organization. In 
some instances, this radical influence has betrayed labor 
into ill-considered action. There has been enough of this 
to awaken thoughtful people to the grave danger, should 
American labor ever allow itself to use its power in strictly 
class-interest action. The public will not forget the threat- 
ened strike of railroad men during the World War. Their 
strike would have made America's war action absolutely 
impotent. The growth of capital and labor differences in 
America may be summarized as follows : Capital developed 
vast natural resources. In so doing it became dictatorial, 
sometimes insolent, both to labor and to the public. Labor 
suffered injustice at the hands of capital. The public looked 



44 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

on and did nothing. Then labor organized. The public 
was sympathetic, for it believes in fair play, and it remem- 
bered the overbearing deeds of capital. The club of 
organization grew weighty in the hands of labor. It meas- 
ured the weight of its club and looked at the convenient 
head of capital, its arms tingling with an impulse to do to 
capital with the club what capital had done to it with the 
power of unsanctified dollars. Labor used the club. The 
confusion which followed disturbed the comfort of the 
public, which now decided that merely looking on would 
not do. Measuring out sympathy to the under-dog of the 
fight did not meet the needs. It is now dawning upon the 
mind of the public that it must make itself a party to the 
industrial activities of capital and labor, in such fashion 
as shall compel the two parties to settle their disputes by 
arbitration and to subordinate their quarrels to the superior 
rights of a general public. In this direction lies the cure 
for the ills of the industrial order. 

The day of the machine. The power machine is the 
.center about which modern industry is organized. It is a 
thing of steel, of bolts and screws and wheels and cogs 
and knives and whirling arms, a heartless creature of man's 
making, a Frankenstein. The order of Watts and Stephen- 
son and Whitney and Arkwright and Edison and Fulton 
thought they were ushering in the Golden Age for man 
when they harnessed the machine to work for him. They 
did usher in an age of gold, but not a Golden Age. The 
machine has entered into the life of man, so that to stop 
it would be to destroy hundreds of thousands, and greatly 
embarrass hundreds of millions. The scheme of civilized 
life is now attuned to an accompaniment of whirring 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 45 

wheels, groaning presses, honking horns and screaming 
whistles. From the cradle to the grave the machine serves 
and carries us. Also it often masters us. Therein lies the 
tragedy of the machine. Once the worker and the em- 
ployer were friendly and met daily. Now the machine 
stands between the two, and too often puts into their hearts 
its own insenate hardness. In order to make human touch 
and mutual interests still more difficult, the machine led 
its owners to organize themselves into a something that 
almost approximates the hardness of the machine. They 
created the corporation. What had been left of interest 
on the part of the owner for his workers received another 
blow. What does a stockholder of a manufacturing enter- 
prise want? He wants profits. What will the directors there- 
fore seek after? Profits. What will the president and 
superintendents have ever before their eyes? Profits. This 
is not immoral in itself. The evil is not in what the scheme 
does for production. It is in what it has not usually done 
for the human flesh and blood that stands before the ma- 
chine. The dividend-seeker has often thought no more of 
the interest and needs of the man or woman at the machine 
than of the insenate machine itself. 

The machine and the soul of the worker. Work is the 
basal concern of man. God cursed the ground for Adam's 
sake. Fallen man would destroy himself by the curse of 
idleness if he did not have to work. The greatest happi- 
ness that comes to a normal man or woman is a by-product 
of work. Through work man expresses and satisfies his 
soul. It may be digging a ditch or it may be writing a 
poem. God has ordained that in useful work man may put 
forth the creative instinct that lies inside of him. But God 



46 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

put Adam to tilling the soil. Working with the soil is the 
oldest pursuit of man and is still the most essential. The 
growth of unrest among laborers has been largely a develop- 
ment of machinery and industrialism. The farmers and 
the women who work in their homes are about the only 
large classes of workers who do not go on a strike. Both 
work for longer hours than the industrial workers. The 
farmers work for less money than the industrial workers 
and the women work for love alone. Each class sticks to 
the job essentially because it gives an adequate oppor- 
tunity for the soul to express itself. Such work has more 
to do with forming character than books do. From books 
we take in; in our work we give out. Outgo forms char- 
acter more than the intake. Why, then, does the machine 
tend to make the worker restless? Is it something in the 
nature of his work? Or is it the conditions under which 
the work is done? It is both. The old-time shoemaker 
took pride in the shoes he made. The shoes were his con- 
tribution to the common weal. But the worker in a fac- 
tory, whose job day in and out and year in and out may 
be stitching away at the toes of thousands of shoes, with- 
out ever seeing the completed product, will find it difficult 
to take satisfaction in his work. When man made the 
machine he was not thinking of souls, but he created a 
something which ever since had dealings with souls, and 
they are not finer or better or more tender from the com- 
merce. 

Christianity and the cure. These problems vex statesmen, 
puzzle students and try the spiritual resources of Chris- 
tianity. They are one of the conditions of modern life. 
If we are to hold our land for Christ, we must master 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 47 

the machine. It is the belief of the author that we can 
do it. The machine itself is more and more demanding a 
higher order of men to direct it. Christianity and states- 
manship have a vital interest in this mastery of the ma- 
chine by man, and both can aid toward the result. But 
Christianity's function is rather to create a public demand 
for fair dealing and human kindness, than to seek to work 
out detailed plans for capital and labor. The impersonality 
of the machine and of corporations and masses of "hands" 
have made the trouble. The antidote lies in the direction 
of bringing back something of that human interest into in- 
dustry that existed before the day of the machine. The 
efficiency expert has, I think properly, been regarded as an 
insult by industrial laborers, for the reason that he was 
capital's expedient for bringing human flesh and blood 
further toward the callous exactness of the iron machine. 
Capitalists, driven by the hard school of necessity, are be- 
ginning to substitute human interest and teaching-contact, 
through foremen and others, for the high-brow efficiency 
expert. Labor troubles will tend to disappear when a 
sense of humanity half way catches up with dollar-coining 
efficiency in industry. Both labor and capital have sinned 
before God and the American public. Capital is already 
bringing forth some fruits meet for repentance. Labor was 
not the first offender, but it is the slower at repentance, 
and the public is probably suffering more from it now than 
from capital. American Christianity must be virile enough 
to master the selfishness of both, by making capitalists and 
workmen who are Christians in their business as well as in 
religious profession. 



48 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Congestion in the cities. The 1920 census shows that 
more than half the population of the country now lives in 
the cities. This congestion of population is unwholesome 
in many ways. It relates itself to too much immigration 
and to the unwise competition in cities and towns for in- 
crease of population, and is at the bottom of most of the 
present agitation by radical socialists in this country. After 
our experience with aliens during the World War, it is in- 
conceivable that Congress shall not enact laws that will 
put restrictions about immigration that shall keep out of 
this country immigrants who have no intention of becom- 
ing Americans and who are enemies of the American idea. 
Still at the date of this writing this dangerous stream is 
again moving toward the flood stage, and the average 
political candidate speaks softly, where he ought to ring 
out a note of warning and corrective legislation. At last 
the strange paralysis of the press on this subject seems 
broken, however, and there is hope that there shall be some 
real regulation of immigration. The slum districts of the 
cities must be stamped out if we are to destroy the breed- 
ing places of anarchy. Boosters for city growth, who can 
see nothing but numbers and dollars, though their name 
is legion, must be made to see the superficiality and danger 
of their crass materialism. Mr. B. F. Yoakum, who has 
been prominent in railroad development in the Southwest, 
in a recent letter in the Manufacturers' Record, says: 
"History is made up of the succession of nations, each of 
which has been born, has gradually grown strong, has at- 
tained maturity, has caught a disease and died. That 
disease was overcrowded cities and 'rural decay.' ' Mr. 
Yoakum pleads that steps be taken to erect suburban homes 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 49 

on one and two-acre lots to de-centralize the tenement dis- 
tricts of New York and other cities. The ownership of 
homes, with elbow-room for wholesome living, will help 
America to get by the present period of radicalism and 
unrest. 

Moral conditions. The soul of America is essentially 
pure and sweet. But the soul of America has been forced 
to traffic with disease, and some of the germs have covertly 
gotten into the blood. When war broke out we were in- 
tensely engaged in making money. It took America's soul 
two years to rub its eyes and get quite awake to what it 
was all about. It had been made drowsy by the mesmerism 
of money and material pleasure. The war was horrible, but 
it challenged America's soul to great exploits. Peace is 
sweet, but it has brought with it a letting down of moral 
tone. Reaction from the war, however, does not account 
entirely for the current lowering of public morals. A poison 
had already been injected into the religious life of America 
in the name of scholarship. Evolution, rationalism, new 
theology had been persistently assaulting the spiritual life 
of the country from high places, and not entirely in vain. 
There is a connection between these teachings, which are 
known only by hearsay to the masses of the people, and 
the moral standards which the masses follow. It is not ob- 
vious and for that reason the danger is the more difficult to 
meet, but the relation of cause and effect exists and it is the 
earnest prayer of the author that he may be able to ex- 
hibit it in its ugly meaning in these pages. 

No doubt as to the facts. The reality as to the lapse 
is not difficult to prove. I do not mean that devout people 
have not remained devout, but that the moral restraints 



50 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

which once held the great mass of the people to purity and 
rectitude have lost their power over great sections of the 
population. Unsavory testimony may be had from prac- 
tically every section of the nation that personal purity has 
been disregarded by a large number of persons who belong 
to the classes that must furnish fathers and mothers for the 
children of the next generation. A brilliant woman writer 
in the Atlantic Monthly of August, 1920, after using 
plainer language than is used here to characterize this 
lapse in morality, goes to the heart of the matter by say- 
ing: "The abandonment of religion is probably most re- 
sponsible of all, since it bears a causal relation to most of 
the other facts. The type of religion we once had gave 
us morals. It called certain things sins. It stuck to the 
Ten Commandments. It forbade exploitation of the senses. 
When we threw over religion, we threw over most of our 
everyday moral sanctions". President Hibben of Princeton, 
in a commencement address, felt impelled to warn mothers 
concerning the necessary moral implications of the scant 
and suggestive dress their daughters wear in their appear- 
ance in society. Responsible for the demeanor of hun- 
dreds of young men, President Hibben felt compelled to 
speak out. I am confident that Atlanta contains as many 
clean-souled men and women as any city of its size. But 
one of the daily papers recently carried a page story about 
the 1125 divorces granted in Atlanta in 1919. An au- 
thority on divorce declares that more than fifty percent of 
them are in order to be able to enter into a new marriage. 
That is, divorce is becoming a species of polygamy, an 
antechamber to free love, which is part of the creed of 
anarchy and Bolshevism. The increased popularity of 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 51 

dancing, especially of those dances which cause even a 
modest man to blush when he chances to see them, 
is part of the alarming picture of moral lapse. So is the 
waning of home authority and the running around of young 
girls alone with men in automobile rides, not seldom late 
at night. We dare not close our eyes to such alarming 
facts. It is a stroke of a venemous viper at the purity and 
sweetness of the American home and the virtue of Amer- 
ican womanhood. 

Selfism. Many evils which now threaten America and 
America's faith may be grouped under the word selfism. 
People talk of their rights, not of their duties. Many are 
in pursuit only of what they call "a good time." The 
profiteer fattens. He is the most uncomely specimen among 
the classes who now make up the liabilities of real Ameri- 
canism and real Christianity. While patriots give and do 
their best to bring harmony and peace in the life of the 
country, the profiteer is frankly in business for what he can 
get for himself alone. He corners markets and grows fat 
on ill-gotten dollars from the necessities of the people, 
leaving to others the task of preserving the social security 
which saves him from being destroyed by his own spiritual 
brother, the anarchist. This selfism dominates in the 
quarrel between labor and capital. It exhibits itself in the 
wild expenditures of money for material comforts and for 
pleasure and vulgar show. It is manifest in the foolish and 
ominous revolt against work, which has affected a large 
number of people. There seems to be a craze for enjoy- 
ment. The automobile will probably in the end contribute 
more to good than evil. But a large part of the public 
has not yet learned how to behave itself with composure 



52 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

and good sense on rubber tires. Expenditures in connec- 
tion with the purchase and upkeep of the machine are ex- 
travagant and far beyond the means of many owners. 
Newsboys and bootblacks are among the owners of costly 
conveyances, and a Negress who was employed as a cook 
in a Southern city is reported to have asked the lady if 
she could have space in the garage to put her limosine while 
on duty. However useful the future of the automobile, it 
is at present an index to foolish and sinful extravagance 
among thousands and is responsible for the undermining 
of the characters of many young people of both sexes. 

A challenge to American Christianity. Such are some of 
the conditions in present American life that challenge the 
spirituality and devotion of American Christian bodies. It 
is not an optimistic view. There are grounds for optimism, 
but their tenability is conditioned upon Christian America 
getting awake to the dangers which have grown up among 
the people of the Republic. Every one of the conditions I 
have named is fundamentally a religious problem. There 
is not one of them that we may hope to solve alone by 
human wisdom or legislation or ethical instruction. Every 
one of them strikes deeper. They take their root in the 
hidden springs of human action. "Out of the heart come 
the issues of life." The tremendous pressure of these and 
similar conditions is oppressing the most thoughtful men 
of America. Since the war, not a few secular newspapers 
and industrial publications have in their editorials frankly 
and repeatedly warned the public that the great need of 
this nation now is an old-fashioned revival of genuine 
Christian faith. Recently the Jewish Mayor of Boston re- 
marked: "You may think it strange, coming from me, a 



CONDITIONS CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY 53 

Jew, but the alternatives in America today are Christ or 
anarchy." Never was there in any nation a need for 
Home Mission effort comparable to that which now con- 
fronts American evangelical Christian bodies. And there 
is no other country in which a large and statesmanlike 
program for bringing the people under the sway of the 
gospel will mean so much for the evangelization of the 
whole world. The present stress is great, but God is able 
to save the people and the nation from all the ills we have 
mentioned and all other ills. But His people must repent 
their backslidings and rally with their whole hearts to the 
banner of Christ. 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER II. 

Why should we study the problems of our day? 
Show that this demands our best thought. 
Show that ours is not a day of deep popular thinking. 
Name some forces that are chloroforming men's souls. 
What part have godless intellectuals among these? 
Why can we not ignore the teachings of unbelieving intellec- 
tuals? 
Discuss the problem of encouraging religion by law. 
What of unassimitated immigration? 
What responsibility has the home? 
What would radical socialism do with law and order? 
Show that class control would destroy democracy. 
Show how industrial problems arose in America. 
What has the power machine done to man? 
What is the relation of Christianity to these problems? 
What of the problem of congested city populations? 
What moral conditions followed the World War? 
What lies underneath this moral lapse? 
Is Christianity strong enough to master these problems? 



CHAPTER III. 
OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK. 

We are able. There is poignancy in the question of the 
ability of Christianity to master and make safe American 
life and institutions. The world has recently been shocked 
to the center by a colossal effort to overturn civilization 
and Christianity. The issue sometimes seemed to be 
trembling in the balance, but the God of nations willed 
better things for mankind; the forces of liberty and hu- 
manity were victorious. The victory was not attained, 
however, without wrenching to the roots the established 
order of the nations. We are still in the grip of the fer- 
ment of reconstruction. Society is plastic, seeking again 
to find rest and poise over a stable center. It is of im- 
measurable importance that the religious forces of America 
shall strike with power and purpose while the iron is hot, 
so that when society shall settle it shall be into moulds made 
by the gospel of righteousness and peace. Our Bap- 
tist people have hitherto arisen to the emergencies oc- 
casioned by war. The Revolutionary and Civil Wars were 
followed by Baptist growth and effectiveness. War brings 
to men a new sense of the value of liberty, and Baptists 
are evangels of liberty through Jesus Christ. 

Our one unfailing resource is Christ. Before seeking to 
measure the resources with which we may expect to enter 
into the battle for the heart of America in these troublous 
times, we cannot too securely fix in our thoughts the fact 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 55 

that at bottom there is only one Great Resource. It is to 
bring men to accept salvation from sin through the aton- 
ing merits of the blood of Jesus Christ. So far from taking 
this for granted without emphasis, it is the one thing we 
can never take for granted in this sin-deceived world. The 
denomination or local church or preacher has lost the one 
indispensible weapon of Christian warfare that has for- 
gotten how to wield the sword of the Spirit, which brings 
human hearts into subjection to the blessed Son of God. 
Our one unfailing resource, competent in weakness as well 
as in greatness and strength, is the resource of David, who 
with smooth stones conquered the armored giant. It is 
the resource of Peter, whose simple words on the Day of 
Pentecost brought 3,000 enemies rejoicing into the ranks 
of Jesus Christ. To the Unitarian our Lord may be a moral 
example. To the rationalist He may be a mere man of His 
day. To the Catholic He may be a remote God, to be ap- 
proached only through Mary and the Saints. But to us, 
who must win in this Republic for liberty and safety, He 
is the Creator-Redeemer, to whom repentant sinners have 
direct access. With Him as our leader, our secondary re- 
sources become well worth our careful scrutiny. In Him 
they take on that high value which inheres in those things 
which He may condescend to use for the spread of His 
reign in the hearts of men. 

Greatest natural advantages in history. In America are 
the largest and best resources that the world has seen 
that are suitable to contribute to Christian progress. Our 
democratic institutions, our system of public schools, our 
unmatched number of members in evangelical churches, 
our separation of Church and State, our religious liberty, 



56 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

our unique experience among the nations of earth of 
having started as a Christian people — these are our 
testimonials that in America God has given His people 
the best opportunity to hold a country in bondage 
to the kingship of Jesus Christ. The history of 
the nations until America was born, was the history of 
State Churches. The people of the earth groaned under 
the restraints of a State Church, or a Papal Church or a 
heathen religion. In America no fetters bind the con- 
sciences of men. The source of our freedom was the faith 
of men and women who started this country on its way a 
Christian country. The common law of the land and the 
ethical standards of American society have their source in 
the Christian religion. Our public moral standards are the 
rule of behavior for millions who do not profess faith in 
Christ and who often do not know the source of their 
standards. A country in which Christianity has so in- 
fluenced people who do not profess to follow the Christ is 
a country unusually predisposed toward any effort Christian 
men and women may put forth to make its people Christian. 
The same may be said of the modern tendency among some 
classes to profess admiration for Christ, while they neglect 
and avoid the churches. These sick souls may not have 
thought of it, but if it had not been for the faithfulness. in 
testifying to Christ of the churches they neglect, they would 
not know of Him, to judge whether they admire Him or not. 
Resources set forth in figures. It is the custom in coun- 
tries which have State Churches to count everybody a mem- 
ber of the organization fostered by the State, except those 
who may openly ally themselves with some non-conformist 
body. Such a procedure destroys the value of State Church 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK . 57 

figures, while it impoverishes spirituality in the misallied 
church organizations. The separation of Church and State 
in America has saved us from these evils. Our figures 
showing religious membership have real significance. The 
only considerable influence that makes it difficult to get the 
facts in balanced perspective is the Catholic practice of 
counting their entire population as members of their or- 
ganizations. The figures of the 1916 Religious Census 
accord Catholics a membership of 15,721,000. If they 
were counted as the evangelical bodies count their mem- 
bers, they would have scarcely more than 6,000,000. 
Methodists and Baptists are each more numerous in America 
than Catholics. The 1916 government Religious Census 
shows a religious membership in America of 41,926,854. 
Of these the swollen Catholic report accounts for 15,721,- 
815. Besides, there are 976,504 members of anti-Christian 
bodies. The list of anti-Christian sects does not include 
the Christian Science group, which numbers perhaps 200,- 
000. The various evangelical bodies report a total of 
25,228,535. Roughly speaking, one person in four in our 
country has made a profession of faith in Christ 
in an evangelical church. While this sets before 
us a great unfinished task, our present concern is to 
measure the significance of 25,000,000 members of evan- 
gelical bodies in America. No nation ever had one-half so 
many members of evangelical bodies. Many of this vast 
number are doubtless passive rather than active in propa- 
gating the faith. Some of them are church members with- 
out knowing Christ. Still, it is the most significant group 
of church members ever set down in figures. We may at 
least safely say that the vast majority of persons included 



58 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

in this large number have made an open confession of faith 
in Christ, and are living lives that more or less correctly 
represent the Christian ethic before the community. While 
this is a low plane on which to place the Christian life ideal, 
it is much in advance of the best which State Churches 
have ever been able to set forth through their member- 
ship. 

Good will of the people. It is fair to include among our 
resources those conditions which may lend themselves to 
the accomplishment of the task of making our country safe, 
though they do not proceed directly from within. Of such 
is the general good will of American people to the ap- 
proach of the messenger of Christ. Authorities estimate 
more than two adherents for every member of an evangel- 
ical church. Limiting our estimate to two, there are, be- 
sides 25,000,000 evangelical church members in America, 
50,000,000 adherents. These people have not professed 
faith in Christ, but they are usually open to the approach 
of those who would lead them to Christ. Usually they are 
to some extent interested in and favorably disposed toward 
the religious life and effort of one or another of the 
evangelical bodies. They are more or less under the sway 
of the ethical teaching of some evangelical pulpit. Evan- 
gelical bodies thus have an open door through which to 
reach 50,000,000 unsaved Americans, such as is not found 
elsewhere in the world. Moreover, there is not another 
equal body of people in the world whose salvation would 
mean so much toward the spread of faith to the ends of 
the earth. It is true that there are thousands of open 
enemies of Christ now in America, but the masses of the 
people have not yet been caught in the net of modern sophis- 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 59 

ticated unbelief. Actually to win their hearts to Christ 
means to bring each one to a field of spiritual conflict and 
decision, and is a tremendous task for American Chris- 
tianity. But why should we flinch in the face of the task, 
who follow One who has out of more difficult conditions 
won in America the spiritual victories whose fruits we now 
enjoy? In many lands religious persecution, State church 
restrictions, and traditional animosities close the hearts of 
the people. In America religious liberty and traditional 
friendship for evangelical faith are wide open doors of 
opportunity, a challenge to the churches of Christ to be- 
stir themselves as faithful heralds of the redeeming Christ. 
Evangelical faith in the South. In the Southern Baptist 
Convention territory, there are 12,000,000 members of 
evangelical bodies, forty-eight percent of the evangelicals 
of the entire nation. In this region there is a Catholic pop- 
ulation of 2,000,000, while the evangelical population is 
about 35,000,000. Evangelical religion has in the South 
its best opportunity to show what it can do for a people 
and for the world. The people are of the old American 
stock to a greater degree than is true elsewhere in the 
country. Here the traditions of the fathers concerning 
civil and religious values are still held with firmness by 
practically the entire population. In the South to-day is 
the world's most unhindered seed-bed for propagating the 
faith of the New Testament. Evangelical Christianity must 
either save the South and project its spiritual force with 
saving impact on the rest of the country and the world be- 
yond, or surrender its right to claim that it is a world- 
conquering religion. If it cannot render the required ser- 
vice in this freest gospel field of the world, how can it 
keep faith in its conquering power in other lands? 



60 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

The Baptist center of gravity. The South is the Baptist 
center of gravity of the world. Baptist principles are as 
old as the gospel of Christ, but they have had a hard time 
in this world. For many generations they were out of 
favor, their adherents discredited and persecuted by dom- 
inant Church and State powers. In America they took hold 
with such power that their principles were wrought into 
the basal law of the land. But they have not always been 
greeted with acclaim and generous recognition by the 
majority, even in America. In the South are the great 
Baptist resources. Largely from the South as their base 
Baptists must take measure of their opportunities to per- 
meate the world with their principles. Mainly in the South 
must be created the dynamic which shall enable Baptists 
to master their own land for Christ, and spread their evangel 
to all nations. Five-sixths of the Baptists in America, and 
three-fourths of the Baptists in the world, are in the South. 
Approximately one person out of every six in the South is 
a Baptist, and one in two is an adherent of the Baptist 
denomination. We have 6,000,000 of the 12,000,000 evan- 
gelical church members, by the 1916 census, and even a 
larger number and larger percentage by more recent sta- 
tistics. Nor do these statistics represent the full force of 
the facts. The Religious Census reveals that, while thir- 
teen percent of the religious bodies of the country are chil- 
dren under thirteen years of age, only four percent of 
Baptist membership is so young. That is, Baptists have 
by so much a larger relative membership among the adults 
than the figures of the census show to be the case, and at 
the same time, the advantage of receiving no members ex- 
cept on a voluntary profession of faith. 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 61 

White and Negro members. In estimating the resources 
of Southern Christian bodies, it is desirable to separate the 
white and Negro groups. This will show a better situation 
among the blacks than the whites in relation to religious 
membership. Roughly, the population in the South and 
Southwest totals 38,000,000, of whom 10,000,000 are 
Negroes. Of the twelve million evangelical church mem- 
bers, the whites have about 8,000,000 and the Negroes 
4,000,000. Of the 6,000,000 Baptists in the South, the 
whites and blacks have 3,000,000 each. Four Negroes 
out of ten are members of an evangelical church, and 
three out of ten are Baptists. Only one white person in 
three and a half is a member of an evangelical church, and 
only one in nearly nine is a Baptist. One white man in three 
in the South is a Baptist adherent or member, while five 
Negroes out of six occupy a similar relation to the Bap- 
tist faith. It thus appears that, while the evangelical faith 
of the nation has one of its greatest resource-fields in the 
South, the South is itself a great and promising field for 
winning men and women to Christ. So long as 20,000,000 
of 28,000,000 Southern whites make no profession of 
religion, a great responsibility will rest upon evangelicism 
to win its own unreached and neglected millions to the 
Master. The Negroes greatly need religious education and 
training, but they are already more generally evangelized 
than any group of people of whom we have the record. 

Our wealth. Wealth is a liability, as well as a resource. 
It) is a liability so long as it is won and held and used 
without any sense of obligation to God. Only as we use 
our possessions as stewards of Christ, does our money be- 
come a resource. America is now the wealthiest nation 



62 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

the sun ever shone on. Its wealth is estimated at $225,- 
000,000,000. This is more than that of the four next 
wealthiest nations in the world. It is a per capita wealth 
of about $2,250 for every man, woman and child in the 
land. Within recent years, an increasing proportion of 
this wealth has been in the South. This section is now 
growing in wealth more rapidly than any other in America. 
Most of the South's wealth is in the hands of men who 
profess to be Christians. A very large amount of it is in 
the hands of Baptists. Baptists have carried the gospel to 
the poor and the disadvantaged, as well as to the prosper- 
ous. But the prosperous have grown wealthy, while the 
indigent have accumulated property and are prosperous. 
Never before were Baptists so well able freely to use money 
as a resource for winning souls and building up the King- 
dom of Christ. 

Baptist use of wealth. How are Baptists using their 
wealth? Are we using it for pleasure and power and in- 
dulgence, or in the service of God? A careful scrutiny 
would show that in the recent stress many of our people 
have sinned in the methods they used to make money, while 
still more of them have been guilty before God for the 
unwise and lavish expenditure of money. In these faults 
they have behaved very much like their brethren in other 
Christian bodies and too often like men of the world, who 
make no pretense of taking God into partnership in getting 
and spending. But Southern Baptists exorcised the spirit 
of covetousness in a most conspicuous and significant way 
in their 75-Million Campaign, from which they secured sub- 
scriptions totaling $90,000,000 for Christian work. It was 
a notable triumph over covetousness and indifference at a 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 63 

strategic time. Following our enormous expenditures foi 
war and war welfare work, not to do some great giving 
directly to the spiritual work of our faith would have been 
in effect to deny the supremacy of the cause of Christ. 
The gifts were also made at a time when they would place 
the sacrificial giving of a large number of Baptists over 
against the high tide of reckless spending. Also it was a 
victory in the secondary realm of money which God gave 
Baptists of the South over those who placed money first, 
and who had, in some instances, criticized and be-littled 
Southern Baptists for not giving so much money as some 
wealthier religious bodies gave. 

Spiritual victory through money. If Southern Baptists, af- 
ter refusing to go into the Interchurch Movement, had failed 
to raise their great campaign fund, and Northern Baptists, 
who went in, had more than raised theirs, it is not improbable 
American Christian bodies to-day would be in the hands 
of the Interchurch Movement, and great mass movements, 
with social reform and politics outranking the spiritual tasks 
set for Christian churches, would be consuming the en- 
ergies and destroying the spirituality of American Christen- 
dom. Money and the use of money are a fine fruit of 
Christianity, but they are not the essence of it. Our wealth 
is a resource for the Lord, but only when we subordinate 
it, and also the raising and spending it, to the cultivation of 
the inner graces of Christian faith. It was inevitable that so 
great an advance in money-giving as characterized the 
75-Million Campaign should subject our Baptist life to 
some unaccustomed strains. Too many needy causes had 
cried out too long for an enlarged support which was slow 
to come, for us to expect that the pendulum of our com- 



64 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

mon experience would not swing out into new arcs. But if 
our newly-released monetary resources shall be firmly and 
constantly subordinated to the cultivation of the unseen 
wealth of the Spirit and to the requirements of our cher- 
ished liberty and democracy, we shall gain the advantages 
of liberality without losing spirituality or liberty. 

The Christian home. No summary of our resources foi 
making America Christian would be adequate that did not 
magnify the office of the home. Civilization and national 
security are built upon the home, the church and the school. 
The Rev. M. E. Dodd, D. D., pastor of the First Baptist 
Church at Shreveport, Louisiana, at the request of one of 
his members recently dedicated with prayer and appropriate 
religious services a new home into which the family was 
moving. Why not? The Christian home is a resource 
without the help of which neither the Church nor the State 
can hope to accomplish their God-given tasks. In the home 
the child is born. In it he opens his wondering eyes, and 
his uncertain feet take their first steps. In it the maiden, 
full of sweet dreams and hopes, is given in marriage. In 
it the wounds of the day's task in the world are healed and 
life's victories and disappointments pondered. In it we 
welcome our friends, sometimes entertaining angels un- 
awares. In the charmed circle of the home are born the 
material out of which memory fashions the treasures that 
give sweetness and strength when the feet tread hard paths 
in life. In it at last the spirit takes its flight from the tab- 
ernacle of clay, which reverent hands carry from the portals 
of the home to its last resting place. In its intimacies 
hearts pierced with sorrow hide their ache until God shall 
spell out to the human spirit the lesson that even in sorrow 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 65 

he who waits upon the Lord shall have joy. In Deute- 
ronomy Moses said to Israel: "Hear, Israel. The Lord 
our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy soul and with all thy might. And these 
words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart. 
And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and 
thou shalt talk to them when thou sitteth in thy home, and 
when thou walketh in the way, and when thou lieth down 
and when thou riseth up." In such a home as this, though 
that of an humble carpenter, the Saviour of the world was 
nurtured. Young men and women who come out from 
homes of prayer and Christian conversation and Bible read- 
ing will have an anchor which shall hold when the winds 
of life become storms. Such a boy will have something 
to fortify him against appeals to evil by boon companions, 
and even to withstand the more insidious attacks which may 
come later, if he has the misfortune to fall into the hands 
of an atheistic or rationalistic college professor. 

Enemies of the home. The enemies of the home are 
numerous in our times. Thoughtless marriages, easy di- 
vorces, apartment houses, the craze for continual amuse- 
ment, are some of the enemies that are betraying the 
American home. America now leads the world in divorces — 
even Japan. An authority says that one marriage in seven 
ends in the divorce courts. Too often the members of the 
family, especially in the cities, go home only when everything 
else is played out. The little child who referred to her father 
as "the man who stays here on Sunday" was correctly de- 
scribing not only many fathers, but also mothers and many 
of the sons and daughters. Gone the old family circle and 
fireside, the memory of which for millions of manly Ameri- 



66 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

cans affords strength and beauty and faith, when they are 
battered and wounded by the hardness of the world. Gone 
the joyful fellowship, the joyful songs and the rollicking 
fun of the children. Instead, the movie, the theatre, the 
club, the social function, the automobile ride, the endless 
pull of petty things that promise amusement. These things 
appeal mainly to the superficial and ephemeral, while they 
cheat the home of its opportunity to perform functions for 
the souls of children required of it by God. Housing 
conditions in the cities are partly responsible. The apart- 
ment house that will not permit children in its apartments 
ought, by special legislation, to be taxed out of existence, 
as an enemy of the home and nation. Not that the men 
and women who prefer selfish ease and steam heat to chil- 
dren are fit to be parents of future Americans, but 
that our country cannot get along if it becomes honey- 
combed with men and women of the coddling type, who 
find children "unfashionable." A woman too selfish to rear 
children is unfit to do so. But it is necessary to save society 
from being infected by her parasitic example. The moving 
picture show is too new for us to be able to measure with 
finality the good and the bad which it has brought. But 
we are competent to set down that it is one of the worst 
enemies of the home. Its very cheapness and accessibility 
make it dangerous. 

A playwright's appeal. Mr. James Forbes, a successful 
playwright, in a recent speech before a dramatic league in 
New York, said: "When I was a boy I was allowed to go 
to the theatre twice a month. The present-day youth goes 
every night. I am a parent and I feel deeply on this sub- 
ject. If I leave my boy entirely dependent on amusement, 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 67 

I will have failed miserably." If we are to make Christian 
the people of America, we must rescue the home from its 
modern enemies. It is one of the deepest needs of our 
times, and the re-enthronement of its sanctities will prove 
of immeasurable value both to religion and citizenship. 
Pulpits should maintain a year-long crusade. The emphasis 
placed upon it by the distinguished pastor who dedicated a 
home among his people is emphasis at a point where it 
cannot well be overdone, and where it is being woefully 
underdone. The greatest need in America at this hour is 
a revival of interest in the home. It is a resource the proper 
use of which means immeasurable and blessed forces to 
make our land Christian. It is now beset by more enemies 
than ever in history. Every preacher and Christian teacher 
and writer may well come to a new championship of the 
home. Thus we may turn a grave danger point into that 
blessed resource for righteousness and love and faith which 
God has ordained that it should be. 

Religious workers. An ever-growing number of willing 
and active Christian workers is one of the hopeful resources 
of present-day Christianity. More laymen are becoming 
active in religious work and more young women are train- 
ing for missionary service than ever before. Among South- 
ern Baptists, the Baptist Bible Institute at New Orleans, 
sprang promptly into large usefulness and success, training 
not only ministers but all classes of lay workers for Chris- 
tian service. In the Baptist Theological Seminaries at 
Louisville and Fort Worth are large and prosperous train- 
ing schools for women. Other denominations are having 
similar experience. Last year 2,336 young people were re- 
ported by the Superintendent of Evangelism of the Home 



68 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Mission Board as having offered themselves for religious 
work. These things point to the great storehouse of latent 
gifts for religious service which is ready to give out its riches 
in response to understanding cultivation. In the Woman's 
Missionary Union Southern Baptists have enlisted in mis- 
sion study and support a great group of elect women. They 
are a tremendous force for the bringing of the Kingdom of 
Christ, always alert and always to the front in every good 
service, the noble vanguard of our Baptist progress in cul- 
tivating a conscience for missions and stewardship. In the 
training of Sunday-school teachers the Sunday School 
Board has performed and is performing wonders. In the 
field of the ministry, the enlargement of the number oi 
workers has not been so promising. As we propose to 
treat this need elsewhere we only remark here that the na- 
tional dearth in the ministerial supply has been slowest to 
strike Southern Baptists. There are still many of our young 
men answering God's call to this holy service, though the 
supply is falling distinctly below the need, and the prospect 
of barrenness in our churches of men who elect that life 
shall mean to them to preach Jesus Christ is calculated to 
humble us. 

Denominational press. The printing press turns more to- 
day than ever in the past. Most of its output is ephemeral 
or directed to other than religious ends. Still there is a 
larger output from the religious press than ever of books, 
tracts and pamphlets, and of periodicals and papers. The 
denominational weekly press does not take the place of 
the other forms of publication, each of which is growing in 
use and value. Its contents, as compared with those of a 
book, for instance, are more temporary and vanishing in 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 69 

the impression made. Still our religious newspaper press 
may be taken as the best illustration of the power and value 
of our religious publications, after making it perfectly cleai 
that nothing we can print can take the place of the Bible, 
and that all we print has religious value only in the degree in 
which it imparts the teaching or illustrates the spirit of the 
Bible. Though temporary and vanishing, as compared with 
some other forms of religious publication, the denomina- 
tional press ranks first in several vital respects. It secures 
sustained results by its frequent appearance. It gathers up 
and expresses the spirit of fellowship of the whole denomi- 
national body. It leads the spirit of comradeship and co- 
operation in advancing every co-operative effort for the 
Kingdom. In a unique sense it has the opportunity to enter 
into the daily heart-life and the common human experiences 
of its readers. It is ever alert and best adapted to sound 
a note of warning concerning doctrinal dangers, or the ag- 
gressions or organized evil. No other medium of publicity 
has so admirable an opportunity to relate the Christian 
dynamic to the problems of the civil, moral, political and 
economic environment, suggesting how God's people may 
adjust their faith and action helpfully to the common weal, 
while they safeguard any of their own number from being 
stampeded by unproven theories and doctrines. All the 
way from the intimacies of daily life to the deepest experi- 
ences of mind and spirit, it is the privilege of the denomina- 
tional paper to come as a letter from fellow servants of 
Christ into the homes of His people. For Baptists it has for 
generations been the leading vehicle through which the spirit 
of co-operation has been so awakened that it could accom- 
plish what centralized authority has been used to accomplish 
in some other Christian bodies. 



70 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

A tribute to Southern Baptist papers. Such is a brief 
picture of the denominational weekly as Southern Baptists 
have known it. Our editors have refused to turn their pa- 
pers into imposing vendors of learned theses only, rightly 
considering the loss of intimacy of touch a greater lack 
than could be balanced by the more or less doubtful ad- 
vantages of deep and abstract utterances, which appeal to 
a select few, and impress the curious intellectual on-looker, 
but leave unfed the intimacies of interest and spiritual fel- 
lowship among the rank and file of God's children. They 
have furnished a free and untrammeled medium of expres- 
sion concerning the policies of the denomination's agencies 
and have thus helped it wisely to direct its agencies and 
Boards, and at the same time keep them in the confidence 
of all the people. It is impossible to overestimate the value 
to Southern Baptists of their denominational press as a 
resource. It has in a vital sense been all the more theirs 
when private brethren bore the burden of financing it, while 
the denomination itself had a democratic forum responsible 
always to the denomination, whose good will was its very 
life, but which responded all the more readily to currents 
of denominational life and thought because it was not re- 
strained from reviewing the actions of the various official 
agencies of the denomination nor burdened with their ob- 
ligations. There is now a tendency toward what is called 
denominational ownership. If that is found to be the wise 
course, Baptists will hold to it. Meantime, the ethics which 
properly restrain this text from arguing a matter of un- 
settled Baptist policy, need not prevent the author from 
paying the above tribute to the high service to Baptist life 
and progress which has been attained under the work of 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 71 

noble men who owned and edited our papers and them- 
selves bore the burden of financing them. Whatever the 
ownership, we owe it to ourselves greatly to strengthen our 
denominational press, and make it respond with vitality and 
sympathy to the needs of all classes of our people. Used to 
the full extent of its potentialities, it is one of the greatest 
resources for advancing the Christian life and service of the 
churches and of the great family of the people of God. 

Home Missions. The limits of this chapter will not permit 
even the briefest reference to all the various agencies 
through which Baptists in the South are laboring to bring 
the Kingdom of Christ. State Missions is the counterpart of 
Home Missions, seeking with the State as the unit to accom- 
plish what Home Missions does with the whole country as 
the unit and the whole denomination as the supporting body. 
Christian education, absolutely vital as a resource, will be 
considered in a later chapter. Benevolences are a growing 
part of our organized effort for Christ, in orphanages, hos- 
pitals and sanitoriums, and in aged ministers' relief. 
In 1880, American evangelical bodies were giving $2,725,- 
000 to Home Missions. In 1916 they gave $17,466,000, 
more than five times as much. In 1916 there were 26,000 
missionaries in the employ of the Home Mission Boards of 
Christian bodies in this country. Since the World War, this 
number has been increased and the amount expended has 
been greatly increased. The record of Home Missions in 
America shows it to be the outstanding organized agency for 
winning this country to Christ. It has won America not once 
only, but in every generation. Over and over it has reached 
out into new fields of need, otherwise not evangelized, 
and has captured them for Christ and made them centers 



72 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

from which future conquests were wrought. Four-fifths of 
the Congregational churches of this country were of Home 
Mission origin. Secretary C. L. Thompson, of the Northern 
Presbyterian Home Board, declared that nine-tenths of the 
churches of that denomination are of home missionary 
planting. Northern Baptists and Methodists and the Epis- 
copalians give estimates that range from five-sixths to nine- 
tenths. 

Southern Baptist Home Missions. The Home Mission 
Board of Southern Baptists has served a field also served by 
State Mission Boards, but every estimate we have been able 
to make points to our Board having aided in planting or in 
nursing into strength not fewer than sixty-five percent of the 
churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. It is still 
doing this service for hundreds of churches yearly. This 
Board has become the leading evangelizing agency among 
all the Mission Boards in America. Last year its mission- 
aries baptized one-fourth of all the converts who united with 
our churches.* If the churches this Board has aided were 
to cease their support of our Baptist work, it would take 
away not less than one-half of all that our people are giving 
to bring the world to Christ. The great growth of evangel- 
ical bodies in America has been largely a result of the con- 
verts brought in and churches organized by home mission- 
aries. Home Missions has fostered Christian education, 
furnished a large number of the young men who are now 
in the Christian pulpits, and has been a faithful, whole- 
hearted and indispensible supporter of the great work of 
Foreign Missions, working usually out of sight, not always 
appreciated by some who owe it most, but always bringing 



This does not include baptisms creditable to co-operative mission 
agencies. Other Home Mission Boards do include them. 



OUR RESOURCES FOR THE TASK 73 

the Christ dynamic into those quiet places where human 
resources are being fashioned to perform the tasks of God 
in the world. Among that high company of forces which 
God has used and is using to make and keep this country 
safe and clean, not one renders a nobler or more far-reach- 
ing service than Home Missions. It reaches out even to the 
farthest and most disadvantaged and neglected and intro- 
duces him through loving ministries to Jesus Christ, the 
Saviour of men. The American evangelical body which does 
most for Home Missions, will thereby make the largest con- 
tribution to the stability and happiness of our own nation, 
and provide the most hopeful base for the spiritual conquest 
of the world. 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER III. 

Show how the times are sorely testing Christianity. 

Why is Christianity our central curative resource? 

How does the strength of Christianity in America compare with 

its strength elsewhere? 
Give the figures that show Christianity's strength here. 
What attitude have the people toward Christianity? 
Show the great strength of evangelical faith in the South. 
Show the religious strength of Southern Negroes. 
What relation has the wealth of the South and of Baptists to 

the problem? 
What spiritual victory have Baptists recently won through 

money? 
What of the Christian home as a resource? 
Name some present enemies of the home. 
What of movies and childless homes? 
Are our young people giving themselves to religious work? 
What of the Baptist press as a resource? 
What tribute is offered to our papers? 
Show how Southern Baptist Home Missions have excelled. 



CHAPTER IV. 
TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST. 

A time of spiritual declension. In recent years many 
have fallen away from Christian faith and its restraints. 
This has been in striking evidence both in Europe and 
America. In our country it is more pronounced than ever 
before. The only experience approximating it in America was 
the general atheism and out-breaking sinfulness of the 
masses about 1 800, following the Revolutionary War. That 
decline was promptly followed by a great revival, which 
swept the entire country. There are tokens that the hearts 
of the American people are now ready for a revival, and 
the issue seems to depend upon the faith and prayerfulness 
of the churches and their leaders. The actual emergence 
of such a revival should be a constant and dominant con- 
cern of all the people of God. The great need may more 
fully appear, if we shall consider in the present chapter the 
nature of our spiritual crisis and measure some of the forces 
which have definitely set themselves against the work and 
Spirit of Christ, and others that obscure the soul's vision of 
Him, even while they speak forth His praises. 

According to prophecy. The New Testament Scriptures 
repeatedly declare that in the latter days there will be a 
falling away from the faith. I Tim. 4:1: "The Spirit speak- 
eth expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from 
the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of 
devils". II Tim. 3:7: "This know also that in the last 



76 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of 
their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, 
disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural 
affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, de- 
spisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, 
lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form 
of godliness, but denying the power thereof * * * * ever 
learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the 
truth". There have been many times of spiritual decline, 
but surely there was never one more correctly pictured by the 
prophetic words of Paul than that which is now at hand. 
From inordinate self-love to learning always without ever 
learning the truth, the words of the Apostle are fulfilled in 
the present attitude of many people in our own country. We 
are entitled to such satisfaction as we can get out of recount- 
ing the wonderful achievements of man in science and in 
providing for human comfort. But, if we shall look beneath 
the surface, we shall find that these achievements have not 
restrained, but on the contrary have often encouraged, the 
spiritual decline. They have led men to trust in chariots 
and in horses, rather than with the Psalmist to "remember 
the name of the Lord our God". 

Facing the facts. It is necessary rightly to appraise the 
facts of the present falling away. German infidelity devoted 
material science to the ends of world domination through 
ruthless destruction. America reacted slowly but with all 
her resources to put down Germany's ambition. But mean- 
time America had permitted the scholastic teachings that 
corrupted the soul of Germany free access to her highest 
centers of learning. From those unequalled vantage points 
from which to enter the thought-stream of our nation, these 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 77 

philosophies which poisoned the soul of Germany are still 
doing their work unhindered. Skepticism has thus had free 
propagation through many intellectuals, while at the other 
extreme brutal Bolshevism has set itself forth seriously as a 
political ideal. These intellectuals think they are serving 
truth by undermining the faith of the people in revealed 
truth, while the Bolshevists announce as the first item of 
their creed that there is no God. The intellectual atheist 
covers unbelief with a thick blanket of hypotheses. Not to 
be outdone, the Bolshevist drapes a thin sheet of idealistic 
theories over his inferno of blood and brutality. Each pro- 
poses to make a heaven on earth and each disbelieves in 
any other heaven. Both have in them the seeds of a hell on 
earth, though the real character of each is not equally 
obvious. Between these extremes the mass of mankind, 
more or less influenced by both, confront all the surging 
problems of a new day. These problems are economic, 
political, industrial, social, racial, educational, class, moral, 
and religious. There is wisdom wherewith to meet them all, 
but its fount is not in the acumen of man's intellect. Its 
source is in God and it can be made available only through 
His work in the souls of men. If the devil can darken the 
windows of the soul by shutting it off from the Sun of 
Righteousness, he can lead human civilization on toward 
the abyss. That he is doing through scores of false faiths. 
A flank movement. This is a flank movement of the devil. 
It is as if he would say, "Men are so incurably religious that 
I cannot hope to cheat the souls of most of them into open 
denial of the spiritual. Therefore I will get them to follow 
false faiths. It does not matter what they are, just so they 
blind their eyes from seeing Jesus the Holy One of God. 



78 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Christianity preaches brotherhood. Very well, I will preach 
it still more. I will say that brotherhood is all there is in 
religion. I will fill every false faith, even to that of the 
bomb-throwing Bolshevists, with cheap idealism and theories 
of human fraternity". Through such sophistries the devil 
is deceiving millions, from some highly respectable church 
unionists to parlor Bolshevists and "rough necks." Only as 
we recognize the hand of Satan in many present theories 
about religion and the social order can we comprehend how 
the craze for a Christ-rejecting idealism should have gotten 
such great vogue at the same time among such diverse 
elements in the social body. "For we wrestle not against 
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, 
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against 
wicked spirits in high places." 

Necessity of conflict. There is another impressive evi- 
dence of the activity of Satan in the present forces which 
condition Christian progress. Obviously the only way for 
Christianity to meet the subtle attacks of its enemies is by 
conflict. Christianity was born in conflict and has made its 
greatest growth through conflict. It brings peace, but also a 
sword. Next to peaceful progress, the thing we should wel- 
come most is to go forth to warfare against His enemies, 
clad in the whole armor of God. But the devil has influenced 
the thought of many men so that they will not resist his on- 
slaughts. He has filled the atmosphere of modern civiliza- 
tion with the suggestion that conflict for one's religious faith 
is not to be thought of. Thinking and defending one's 
belief is all right in politics, economics, science, philosophy, 
social organization, anywhere else except in religion. Prog- 
ress and truth come through the attrition of mind upon 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 79 

mind in every sphere of life, according to this popular 
theory, except in that which has to do with the life of the 
soul, which must both hearten this life and take hold on life 
eternal. In the realm of religion alone, thought must give 
way to sentimentalism. Doctrines are taboo, for doctrines 
lead straight to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, the hope of 
the world. These are not hasty words, they are words of 
truth. The reader will not find in history a day so beset as 
ours with sentimentalism in religion. Society is honey- 
combed with this revolt against doctrine and authority in 
religion. This is a clear challenge to God's people to throw 
off softness and conformity to world opinion and gird them- 
selves for conflict with spiritual wickedness in high places! 
Christians must make atmosphere for Christ, not let their 
testimony be silenced by the unbelieving atmosphere of the 
world. 

Efforts to discredit Christian bodies. This attack against 
a vertebrate faith has directed itself against the American 
system of denominationalism. Denominationalism is a corol- 
lary of the separation of Church and State, and this separa- 
tion has given us our prized religious liberty and the highest 
type of Christianity the world has seen. Other nations tes- 
tify to this fact, and the experience of nations has been dis- 
astrous when they have acted on the theory that outward 
conformity in religion is worth more than liberty of con- 
science. Ignoring these obvious and significant facts, 
there has developed in America a movement of vast 
proportions to try to force American Christian bodies 
into some kind of outward oneness. Men do not all 
think alike in religion, and cannot be brought to do 
so. Therefore thinking must be discouraged and senti- 



80 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

ment substituted. That there are 201 distinct religious bodies 
in America is continually held up to reprobation, and much 
is made of the alleged inefficiency of this. But nothing is 
ever said of the fact that 1 1 4 of these bodies have only 
seven-tenths of one per cent of the total religion membership 
of the country, while ninety percent of the membership is 
in only seven religious bodies: Baptists, Methodists, Presby- 
terians, Disciples, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics. Six- 
ty-five of the religious bodies are merely sub-divisions of 
four denominations, as follows: Baptists, seventeen; Luth- 
eran, twenty-one; Methodists, seventeen; Presbyterians, 
ten. These divisions are usually for administrative con- 
venience rather than for doctrinal differences. Instead of 
berating American Christian bodies for their differences, we 
should thank God that religious liberty has here produced 
such a high type of religious faith, involving many millions 
who unite with churches by their own choice and support 
them by their own substance. The effort will fail to destroy 
religious liberty in America and to play down the contents 
of faith, if God's people shall be faithful. But it is still a 
popular world idea, notwithstanding the grotesque collapse 
of the great Interchurch Movement. 

Ceremony and "service". In setting forth influential 
teachings and influences that are trying to lead men to place 
their hopes elsewhere than in Christ only, we shall pass by 
ceremonialism and ritualism. Roman Catholics place Christ 
far off from the sinner, by putting Mary and the saints 
between him and the Lord and making the hierarchy the only 
gateway to God. Other Christian bodies, including most of the 
evangelical groups, in infant baptism and otherwise, make 
ceremonies and rituals to have some degree of saving merit, 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 81 

which must operate by so much to obscure the merit of the 
only Saviour. These things do more than the average 
person is aware to becloud the atmosphere of faith. Some 
happenings in connection with the World War, opened our 
eyes in astonishment to the realization that ceremonialism 
has a great grip on a significant part of the American public. 
A Baptist chaplain in his examination was asked if he would 
hold up a cross before a dying Catholic soldier boy, and 
perform a similarly adjusted service for a Jew. Some hap- 
penings of that kind at the front were broadly acclaimed on 
the platform and in the secular press as the highest evidence 
of the power of religion and the death of bigotry. One bril- 
liant preacher in a New York pulpit got his name spread 
broadcast in the papers by saying that a man who thought 
first of saving his own soul had a soul too little to be worth 
saving. Jesus said: "Strive to enter in by the narrow door", 
using the word that is used of Christ's own struggle in Geth- 
semane. Nearly all the work to help others materially and 
spiritually is actually done by persons who follow the 
teaching of Jesus rather than that of modern rationalism. 
The Y. M. C. A., responsible spokesmen of which acknowl- 
edge its dependence on the Christian bodies for its very life 
and power to continue, had the misfortune to have in its ser- 
vice not a few secretaries who were afflicted with similar 
spiritual ignorance. In a school conducted for preachers 
going to the front, its instructor advised that for a preacher 
to give water or chocolate to a soldier boy was of more 
importance than his sermons. In fact, the Y. M. C. A. and 
Y. W. C. A. generally use their great influence to magnify 
the welfare fruits of Christian morality rather than its 
spiritual and mystical elements. To the extent they do this 
they are a danger rather than a help to spiritual religion. 



82 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Anti-Christ religions. In 1916 Religious Census of the 
United States gives a membership of about 1,000,000 
in anti-Christian sects. This does not include the Christian 
Scientists nor the Russellites. Neither of these groups made 
a report. Russellism depends upon propaganda without 
organization and Christian Science declined to furnish a 
report. It has perhaps 200,000 members. The four years 
since the census have been fruitful years for false religions, 
both those with distinct organizations and others which have 
depended rather on worming their way into the various 
evangelical bodies by agitation and printed propaganda. Jt 
is significant of all the anti-Christ doctrines that they make 
small effort to win the unsaved man. Their main concern is 
to corrupt and proselyte Christians. From Mormonism to 
Spiritism, every one of them lays its siege at the door of the 
church member. This stamps them for what they are, ene- 
mies of Jesus Christ. The doctrines of every one of them 
agree on one thing, though they differ in others. They all 
agree that Jesus is not the Christ, the only Saviour of souls. 
The unusual growth of anti-Christian religious sects during 
and since the war has resulted from the soul-yearning of un- 
believing people. Taught against Christ, in their hunger 
they turn for comfort to false faiths. Shut off by infidel 
teachers from believing in the Mediator for sin, they go to 
the medium and the tilting ouija board, and the unbelieving 
scientist sometimes goes along with them. 

Strength of these sects. Anti-Christ sects in America 
have about 1 0,000 ministers of their religion, more than the 
entire number of Southern Baptist pastors, as given in the 
last annual register of the Southern Baptist Convention. In 
1916 the membership in the leading anti-Christ sects was 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 83 

as follows: Mormons 462,000, Jews 357,000, Universalists 
58,000, Unitarians 82,000, Spiritualists 29,000, Buddhists 
15,000. Since the census the Spiritualists have had a won- 
derful growth. In fact, there are probably few towns in the 
country in which there is not nightly a group gathered to 
the medium or the ouija board. We will now examine 
more in detail some of these cults, and also certain anj,i- 
Christ teachings not yet bodied forth in religious organiza- 
tions of their own, but perversely influencing the thought and 
faith of many people both within and without the churches 
of Christ. From this examination we omit the Jews, because 
their religion is more generally understood, and because 
their faith, though not the true faith, does afford moral 
restraint for its sincere devotees. But many modern Jews 
are straying from their faith without finding Christ, and 
Karl Marx and Trotsky are fearful proof that apostate Jews 
are capable of being one of the most awful scourges that 
ever cursed humanity. 

Unitarianism. Unitarianism is the most eminently res- 
pectable and influential of all the anti-Christian religious 
sects. It has always lacked the passion for evangelism and 
has won few adherents, though it has been preached in 
America, chiefly in New England, for many years. Unita- 
rians have taken satisfaction in the inroads their views have 
made into the various evangelical folds. This peaceful pene- 
tration seems to suit them better than winning converts from 
the world, and it locates them as anti-Christian in spirit. 
Unitarianism is almost unknown in the South as a religious 
group, but is not so entirely unknown among some persons 
with membership in evangelical churches. It walks amicably 
with the new theology, so much so that latterly Unitarians 



84 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

are beginning to deny the personality of God. This new 
theology is now heard in some Southern pulpits, many of the 
people not seeming to know what it is, except that it sounds 
learned and flatters the natural man. Unitarians hold that 
Jesus was only a man, and that human nature has capacity 
to become perfect in itself, also that the Bible is not in- 
spired except as any good book may be. In 1916, they re- 
ported church property worth more than $15,000,000, ex- 
pended $1,500,000 on their local work and gave only $200,- 
000 to missions. 

Mormoiiism. Mormonism is a spiritual monstrosity. 
It is celebrating its centennial anniversary in 1920. It is 
purely an American product. It has been actively mission- 
ary and is becoming more so. It almost doubled in mem- 
bership between 1906 and 1916. It maintains Southern 
headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It has 6,000 min- 
isters and it openly announces its purpose to take America, 
and rule over the "Gentiles", which is the word by which 
they designate all who are not Mormons. This religion 
teaches that Adam had to eat the forbidden fruit in order 
to know good and evil, and in order to have mortal pos- 
terity. The relation of sex is deeply imbedded in Mormon- 
ism. Adam is our God and our natural father. Jesus had as 
His wives the Marys and Martha. Jesus was the son of the 
Adam-God and Mary by natural generation. Christ's atone- 
ment was not for mankind, but for Adam alone. Forgive- 
ness and salvation come through obeying the Mormon hier- 
archy. Plurality of wives is a means of grace. The more 
wives and children the more honor hereafter. The Mormon 
hierarchy is absolutely autocratic. There is really nothing 
spiritual in this system of teaching, as the above will indi- 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 85 

cate. Mormon missionaries win their way by deception and 
hypocrisy. They usually go by twos, calling at homes and 
distributing tracts. They represent themselves as being 
ministers of the gospel, which is dishonest. When pressed, 
they say they are Latter Day Saints, claiming to have the 
religion of the Bible, but also a later revelation in the Book 
of Mormon, which is better, because it was written in English 
and needs no translation. The literary style of the Book of 
Mormon is a fourth-rate imitation of the Old Testament. 
The tracts the elders distribute are pious homilies and do 
not tell the truth about the system into which the elders 
would entice the unwary. 

What shall we do with Mormonism? I do not know of a 
false faith among them all that is so crude and so overbear- 
ing in spirit as that of the Mormons. They do not mind 
falsifying when it serves their turn. The shorter and ugly 
word is the only one that quite describes the action of the 
Mormon leaders in 1896. In that year they secured State- 
hood by promising the national government to give up the 
practice of polygamy, if it would give them Statehood. The 
government granted their request, and they have continued 
to practice polygamy, according to abundant and competent 
testimony. Evangelical bodies should send more mission- 
aries among the Mormons. We must so instruct the people 
everywhere that they shall not be vulnerable to the approach 
of the tricky Mormon elder. We should learn more about 
the degrading system and teach the people the facts about 
it. Religious liberty must be maintained, even for a group 
that will falsify to get Statehood. But religious liberty does 
not allow us to tolerate in a system that which would destroy 
the moral ideals of the nation, certainly not for a body that 



86 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

boasts its purpose to conquer and rule the nation as it may 
see fit. 

Christian Science. Christian Science can only be ac- 
cepted by persons who set aside reason in the realm of 
religion. But there are thousands who do so, some of whom 
are intelligent in any other field than the religious. Hear 
their creed in brief: God is not a person. God is infinite 
mind. Mind is God. Prayer to a personal God is a hindrance. 
The Virgin Pvlary conceived the idea of God which we call 
Jesus, and gave to her idea the name of Jesus. Jesus Christ 
was not God. The Holy Spirit is Christian Science. Man 
is incapable of sin. There is no sin, only evil ideas. Sin, 
sickness and death are illusions. The blood of Christ was of 
no avail. There is no final judgment, no hell. 
Yet Mrs. Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, 
who had three husbands, one of whom she claimed 
to have raised twice from the dead, made a great show of 
believing the Bible, every cardinal teaching of which she 
denied. Vain and shrewd even to the last, she so fixed the 
system of the so-called church that her book should be 
the pastor. That is, on Sundays a man and a woman usual- 
ly stand in the pulpit, one reading the Bible and the other 
pretending to throw light on it by reading passages from 
Science and Health, the Eddy book — just that, no preach- 
ing. Think of the thousands of little children who have 
died because their obsessed mothers would not secure medi- 
cal attendance, but pretended to ease the pain of their little 
bodies by silly words about there being no pain! But, far 
greater and far worse, this faith with the assurance of 
ignorant unbelief speaks with pretended respect of our Lord 
Jesus, only to deny all that He came into this world to do. 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 87 

Russellism. The founder of Russellism has recently died. 
It is to be hoped the anti-Christ system he developed may 
also die, and there are some indications that it is waning. But 
as its tract literature is still sown broadcast among untaught 
people throughout the South, perhaps it is worth a paragraph 
here. This creed denies the Trinity, declares that Jesus 
Christ was only a man, that there is no Holy Spirit. Man will 
have such a hard time with his sins in this world and with the 
penalty, that after death he will be fully forewarned. He 
will get a second chance, and he will certainly use it. But 
if he does not, then he will be blotted out. All of this 
untruth Russellism gives out sugarcoated with long disserta- 
tions on prophecy. The prophecy appeals to the imagina- 
tion, and the idea of a second chance after death lulls to 
sleep sinful men whose greatest need is to be aroused from 
their false security. This cult is not regularly organized 
into churches, but has many thousands of followers. 

Spiritism. There has been a large revival of Spiritualism, 
following the World War. It needs to be treated in books 
and tracts rather than with the brevity here necessary. It is 
gratifying to know that this need is being taken care of. 
Several books have been written by capable authors and a 
number of good tracts are available. Spiritism teaches that 
the spirits of the dead can and do hold intercourse with the 
living. In its typical form it operates through a particular 
sort of person who is sensitive and can go into a trance. The 
unseen spirit that wants to communicate uses this person 
and controls her (mediums are usually women) in a way 
similar to mesmerism. The spirit is supposed to take pos- 
session of the organs of the body of the medium and through 
them to answer questions, perform stunts or impart informa- 



88 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

tion about the unseen world. Spiritism was familiar to the 
ancients, and is repeatedly referred to in the Bible, which 
forbids it. Some have thought that the contrary is taught 
by the case of the witch who was consulted by Samuel. But 
the Bible does not say that Samuel spoke to Saul, and if it 
was really the spirit of Samuel which appeared, he came not 
in response to the call of the witch, but God in his anger cut 
the procedure short and sent up the real Samuel. Moses 
said, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". In Deuteron- 
omy we read, "There shall not be found among you any one 
that useth divination, or an enchanter, or a wizard, or a 
necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination 
unto the Lord". Simon Magus, rebuked by Paul for seeking 
to make merchandise of the gospel, is referred to by Clement 
of Rome in the following passage, which shows that he was 
a spiritual medium. He says of Simon Magus: "He pro- 
duces phantoms of every conceivable shape, causes vessels 
in the house to be seen moving about, rolls himself upon fire 
without being burned, and sometimes he even flies". 

Its false teachings. There is no evidence that the dead 
come back to earth. David said of his dead son, "I shall 
go to him, but he shall not return to me". The rich man in 
hades begged Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to 
warn his brothers. Abraham did not do so, and the rich man 
by his own confession was powerless to go himself. Yet there 
is now in England and America a turning by multitudes to 
Spiritism. Sir Oliver Lodge, a famous scientist, lost his son in 
the war. He sought to communicate with him through medi- 
ums, and was made to believe he succeeded. His standing as 
a scientist gave his conversion to spiritualism much influence 
with the public. Sir Conan Doyle, an English writer of great 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 89 

repute, but lacking the reverence of Sir Oliver Lodge, also 
became a convert. Both of them wrote books about it. 
Neither of them takes seriously the Bible revelation. Conan 
Doyle openly flouts the Bible. Do the mediums really bring 
messages from spirits? There is strong evidence that they 
do. Who are these spirits? It seems probable that they 
are the devil and his agents. God does not call up the 
spirits, and the mediums certainly have no real power to do 
so. The devil is loose in this world to deceive men. Demon 
possession was well known in New Testament times, and in 
I Tim. 4: 1 we read, "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that 
in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving 
heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons". That its 
teachings are false and worthy of the devil will appear to 
any one who will study the character of the pretended reve- 
lations concerning the future life. You will never hear of 
anybody, however wicked he was in this life, who is not get- 
ting along quite comfortably in his alleged communication 
through the medium. This is to encourage men to reject 
Christ. You will seldom if ever hear from any medium true 
testimony as to the work and character of Christ. This 
ought to open the eyes of Christians as to the source of the 
information. Spiritism is landing thousands in insane asy- 
lums. Its leading exponents blasphemously class Christ a 
medium, whom they have spurned as the Mediator. Many 
of them manifest a penchant for free love and open im- 
morality. God's people must fight this thing by teaching 
the people the truth. 

Bolshevism. Bolshevism is at present the nightmare of 
civilization. Many books are being written on it. It has 
engulfed the most populous nation in Europe and is reaching 



90 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

out its death-hand in a consuming desire to pull the world 
down into the abyss of beastliness. And yet Bolshevism 
seeks to enter men's hearts under sanctions of idealism. It 
if first a doctrine, before it is a beast. It is essentially the doc- 
trine of Karl Max, an atheistic Jew who wrote fifty years ago. 
The first article of its creed is, "There is no God". Therefore 
we must class it as one of the anti-Christ cults, which tend to 
destroy the souls of men, as well as to convert orderly civili- 
zation into one great madhouse. One of the most astonish- 
ing things in recent American life is that there have been 
found here groups of men, mainly foreigners but also na- 
tives, who have become apologists for Bolshevism. We can 
understand how a foreigner, ignorant of what America is, 
might be deceived by the false propaganda of the Lenines 
and Trotskys. But there is no shadow of excuse for a na- 
tive American. If modern social theories in America have 
bred men who can turn their backs upon Americanism to 
preach lust and anarchy, it is time something be done to dis- 
infect these theories. We are astounded when we are told 
by reputable witnesses that even some pulpiteers and some 
college professors are to be found among those whose 
theories slant favorably toward the Bolshevistic apotheosis 
of the brute. If theories and untamed idealism and senti- 
mentality can sink religious and moral instructors so low, the 
time has surely come to forsake soft speech, soft living and 
sentimental tolerance, and to try to inject into this nation 
its old-fashioned fear of Almighty God. 

The social gospel. The social gospel has been set forth 
by able writers in scores of volumes, during the last two 
decades. They charged rightly that there was too much 
individualism in much of our American religion. They 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 91 

pointed out that our industrial civilization had departed 
from the old-time simplicity of social organization. Most 
of them were not slow to fall on the churches in censorious 
criticism, though they looked to the same churches they 
criticized from without to carry the load of reform they said 
some social agency must shoulder. Not seldom they ac- 
cused the churches of being the servants of the rich and not 
friendly to the laboring men. As a general proposition, this 
charge was flagrantly false. But it was a useful club to beat 
the churches with, and multitudes who wanted an excuse for 
their being worth so little as they were in religion, found in 
it a favorite weapon. . It had as much popularity as if it 
had been the truth. Meantime the vast majority of the 
church people were middle class and laboring people, and 
not the rich and privileged, as was falsely claimed. The 
various incarnations of the Union Movement found this 
social gospel already exalted in the public imagination when 
they got busy. They promptly took hold of the preachment. 
For they also desired clubs wherewith to belabor the 
churches. Religion was doing things for your fellows. From 
running soup kitchens and church baseball to carrying 
water to a wounded soldier in France, the business of Chris- 
tianity and its ministers was to serve the physical welfare 
and comfort of men. 

How it has choked spirituality. Without going further into 
the merits of the social gospel emphasis, we need to observe 
that these extreme preachments in fact proposed to put help- 
ing man before obeying God. They put the Second Com- 
mandment before the First, the material before the spiritual. 
They proposed to multiply the fruits of Christianity by cut- 
ting the tree off at the ground. They were, so far, the expo- 



92 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

nents of anti-Christ religion, though they voiced their views in 
many evangelical pulpits. Such movements, once they have 
gained access to evangelical churches, do more harm to spir- 
itual religion than the open enemies of Christianity do. More 
social righteousness is much needed. The preachers need 
to create it by creating a conscience for it. But their func- 
tion is not to make themselves and the churches dividers 
among men, dictators of plans and methods of adjustment 
between capital and labor. Theirs is the higher and far 
more difficult task of making both capital and labor, rich 
and poor, conscious of God and their several obligations to 
do the right. When the pulpit measures up to this require- 
ment, it has given to society what it most needs. Even the 
secular publicists are beginning to preach this duty, which 
should have been obvious to every church and preacher. 
Says Life, a national weekly, devoted to humor, illustration 
and comment, in a recent editorial: "The primary job of 
the churches is to impart religion, not good works. Their 
great office is to connect things visible with things unseen. 
Their reward is spiritual and cannot be accomplished by 
material activities". 

Union Movements. The collapse of the great Interchurch 
Movement was so sudden and complete as to be almost 
laughable. But the great sway it held over the minds of 
men while it lasted merits serious attention. It was un- 
authorized. Its leaders were self-appointed. Not a single 
religious body in its representative meetings had expressed 
a wish for such an organization, nor had one of them a 
determining hand in outlining its activities and principles. 
And yet this organization crept into various bodies through 
their Mission Boards, which thus arrogated authority they 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 93 

did not possess, and was actually well on the way to dra- 
gooning American Christianity into a great religious trust, 
which these self-appointed leaders were to direct. The 
further we get away from that colossal scheme to combine 
the free Christian denominations in America, the more arro- 
gant and unbelievable will the sheer presumption of it 
appear. Yet this Interchurch Movement was only one of 
many incarnations of the Union Movement. Some of the 
other vehicles of that movement are still functioning. Out- 
ward conformity in religion has so obsessed many that they 
do not seem to think anything is taboo which may enable 
them to further that scheme. They persistently identify 
this outward oneness as identical with oneness of spirit, 
which is what our Lord prayed for. This unity is as far from 
pompous and spectacular grandeur as the east is from the 
west. Our special concern in this paragraph is the fact that 
all these union movements necessarily play down and never 
play up the spiritual contents of religious faith. Men can 
combine their faith only on its least common denominator. 
If evangelicals combine with Unitarians, Universalists, and 
New Theology Rationalists, they must forsake their testi- 
mony to the deity of Christ. But union talk is plausible, and 
if Baptists and others want to fortify their people against its 
deceptive pleas, they must teach them the great doctrines of 
God's Book, so they will not be swept off their feet by a 
prominently-trumpeted sentimentalism, which makes much of 
an outward show of fellowship between men, but necessarily 
denies the Lord of Glory, in whose Spirit alone, and not in 
our intellectual grasp of truth, lies the basis of real spiritual 
unity. This spiritual unity all God's people have now, to the 
extent that the Christ-life is in them, and that life would be 



94 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

decreased, not increased, by giving up convictions as to 
Scripture truth for the supposed advantage that wo jld come 
from outward, material conformity. 

A better way. From the vain imaginations of the wisdom 
of men who doubt or disbelieve, it is a great relief to be able 
to turn to the Christ of revelation. It is not necessary to 
know all the philosophies and creeds of men to measure their 
spiritual competency. The Apostle John has given us a 
touchstone by which we may know them: "Every spirit that 
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. 
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is 
come in the flesh is not of God; and this is the spirit of 
anti-Christ, whereof ye have heard that it should come". 
The beggarly spiritual negations of unbelieving scientists 
and philosophers, the new theology, which passes their 
Christ-denying theories on to the people, the passionless 
respectability of Unitarianism, the placid self-mesmerism of 
Christian Science, the militant mockery of polygamous Mor- 
monism, the pitiful puerility of Spiritism with its medium and 
tilting board — all of these promise much, but in performance 
are empty. Finding man at the bottom of a well, they do 
everything for him except throw him a rope and draw him 
out. Evolution says he will grow out; Unitarianism that 
morality will bring him out; Christian Science that he will 
get out by believing he is out; Mormonism that trust in the 
hierarchy will bring him up, and Spiritism that he only needs 
to see beyond the walls of his hole to behold spiritual hap- 
piness everywhere. The only thing they all agree that will 
not help him is the only thing that can save him ! Jesus alone 
came to save that which is lost, and He does save every soul 
who trusts Him. It is said that at the World Parliament of 



TRYING TO BE SAVED WITHOUT CHRIST 95 

Religions at the World's Fair in Chicago, at which Christians 
foregathered with the pundits of the Hindus, Mohammedans, 
Confucians and all the strange faiths of earth, a remarkable 
thing happened. After many learned expositions by the 
spokesmen of anti-Christian beliefs, Dr. P. S. Henson, a dis- 
tinguished Baptist minister, doubtless wondering if his pres- 
ence in that ill-assorted council was not a tacit denial of 
Christ, unable longer to restrain himself, the tears streaming 
down his upturned face, arose and broke forth in song — 

Jesus shall reign where'er the sun 
Does his successive journeys run, 
His Kingdom spread from shore to shore 
Till moons shall wane and wax no more. 

The moment was tense. This involuntary testimony to tjje 
matchless Christ electrified the assembly. Other Christians 
in the assembly took up the song, and the grave representa- 
tives of non-Christian faiths were strangely moved, some of 
them actually joining in the song, as its stately measures 
continued — 

People and realms of every tongue 
Dwell on His love with sweetest song; 
And infant voices shall proclaim 
Their early blessings on His name. 

In such spirit the Christian confronts every teaching that 
would present salvation to man «■ ithout Christ. 



% MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER IV. 

What study is proposed to determine whether there is now a 

spiritual decline? 
Do the Scriptures teach that there shall be such times? 
In what spheres is there now opposition to Christianity? 
What part is false idealism playing against Christianity? 
Show that conflict is necessary with false teachings. 
Show what efforts are being made to discredit Christian bodies. 
Show how ceremonialism and a certain kind of "service" plays 

religion down. 
Give facts about anti-Christ faiths in America, and name the 

leading sects. 
Give the teachings of Unitarianism. 
What do the Mormons teach? 
What should be done with Mormonism? 
Give an epitome of Christian Science teaching. 
What does Russellism teach? 

Tell of the revival of Spiritism, and what the Bible says of it. 
Describe its teachings. Do these people really call up the dead? 
What right have we to treat Bolshevism as a false religion ? 
What of the social gospel? 

Show how its teachings have choked spirituality. 
How do Union Movements in religion tend to weaken vital 

Christianity? 
What is the test of true and false faith? 



CHAPTER V. 

THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM. 

Christian people should understand. Shall a book pri- 
marily intended for mission study classes deal with the 
sources of doctrinal unbelief? The author has had many 
sessions with himself on the subject. There are two diffi- 
culties: One is the unusualness of the material for such use. 
The other is the necessity of dealing with some of the deduc- 
tions of science and philosophy with the purpose of taking 
issue with them. Concerning the latter, I must remind the 
reader that my only purpose is to safeguard Christian truth 
from its would-be despoilers. Each of us according to his 
ability must do that, or acknowledge that fear has led him 
to depart from the New Testament standard of dealing with 
revealed truth. Shall God's people sit quietly in their tents 
while the enemies of the faith capture advantageous out- 
posts and advance against its strongholds, launching against 
it their fiery darts of sophistry and science falsely so-called? 
As to the fitness of the material for a mission study text- 
book, we must not be so much engaged in the study of 
Christian activities that we shall have no eye to observe the 
reprisals by which the arch enemy of souls seeks to tear 
down what we build and make unfit for the builders the 
material not yet quarried. Nehemiah had his temple-build- 
ers work with a sword girded about them, ready to meet the 
enemy while they erected the wall. In a similar way our peo- 
ple must be prepared to resist the insidious spiritual forces 



98 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

that are to-day being directed against vital Christianity. 
There is a real relationship between the immorality and law- 
lessness among the people, so much deplored at the present 
time, and the rationalistic and atheistic philosophy which has 
been seeking to poison America's heart. It is vitally important 
that all evangelical preachers, as well as church members, 
shall understand that relationship, whereas, not even all the 
preachers understand it, and most of their members have 
not had the chance. 

A theory without nourishment. The usual home of ration- 
alism is in a fogbank. The indications are that it has a 
genuine dislike of being photographed. It is a propaganda, 
rather than an organization, and encourages only such or- 
ganizations as promise to aid it in its work of substituting 
science for revelation. It knows how to make itself popular 
with the world, and is found steering its craft with the cur- 
rent on every stream of popular opinion which runs toward 
its promised land. The public mind is enamored of the 
wonderful achievements of material science. Rationalism 
promptly and unfailingly takes advantage of that. But 
material science does not really lead men into any haven of 
safety. The great philosopher, Spencer, spoke some words 
on that which the rationalists would do well to ponder. In 
his "Facts and Comments", he revealed how material science 
had starved his soul, in these words: "The intellectual man 
tells me that I am a piece of animated clay equipped with 
a nerve system and in some mysterious way connected with 
the big dynamo called the world; but that soon the circuit 
will be cut and I will fall into unconsciousness and nothing- 
ness. Yes, I am sad, unutterably sad, and I wish in my heart 
I had never heard of the intellectual man with his science, 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 99 

philosophy and logic". If Spencer could only have learned 
that "a man's life consisteth not of the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth", that "man by wisdom knows 
not God", and that spiritual truth must be spiritually dis- 
cerned! 

Bigger powers without bigger souls. But we of the twen- 
tieth century have electric and steam power, gasoline en- 
gines, sky-scrapers, automobiles, cotton gins, bath tubs and 
plumbing, medical mastery of germs, wireless telegraphy, air- 
ships, submarines. Do not these things indicate that the 
mastery of man is lifting the world heavenward? Well, 
almost the first use man made of the air-plane was to drop 
from it on to hospitals and masses of men his scientifically 
prepared bombs, and the first work of the submarine was to 
dynamite ships and send helpless women and children to 
the bottom of the sea. No; our exaltation of science is not 
wise. It has given man more power, but it has not done 
anything to his soul to make it big enough to use the added 
power for good ends. To the contrary, the juggernaut ma- 
chine which science has fashioned is shutting the light of the 
Sun of Righteousness out from many hearts. But we shall 
see that this effect pleases rationalism, whose reliance is not 
on bigger souls through faith, but bigger men through the 
evolution of inherent forces in man. 

Boring from within* The political propaganda of Bol- 
shevism no more surely seeks to overturn nations by boring 
from within than rationalism purposes to destroy historic 
Christianity by that process. Romanism and Mormonism 
are systems seeking to win the religious allegiance of Amer- 
ican people. They stand for many errors and are subtle, 
but they are at least formal organizations and one is able 



100 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

to draw the line that marks their teachings off from that of 
other groups. Not so with rationalism. Clad in the garb 
of science, it knocks at the doors of all impartially, posing 
as a substitute for or a filling out of all sorts of faith. It is 
taught by many scientists, while other scientists reject it. It 
is taught to immature American youths in most of the uni- 
versities and State colleges. But in these same institutions 
there are other instructors who oppose it, but are largely 
shorn of power to resist the effect of the poison among the 
students. It has now found its way into many theological 
seminaries. There it is probably having its greatest success to- 
ward starving souls of the American people. Rationalism has 
other means for securing the acceptance of its teachings, but 
its favorite method is educational. Some churches are now 
listening to rationalistic preachers. If rationalistic teaching 
continues in theological seminaries at the present rate, a 
large proportion of the most learned preachers of the coun- 
try will in less than two decades be dispensing from the 
evangelical pulpits the spiritual husks of the new theology 
and social reform as food for the hungry souls of men. The 
difficulty of dealing with rationalism is that it bores from 
within. It presents itself to Christians as a new and better 
gospel, instead of standing honestly under its true colors, as 
the enemy of the deity of Jesus Christ. When a spy of the 
enemy is discovered in an army, his portion is court-martial 
and execution. But these opposers of Christian faith use 
words with such careful subtlety that they often inculcate 
their poisonous teachings unhindered. Churches dedicated 
to the deity of Christ, colleges built by the gifts of men and 
women whose whole aim was to serve and exalt the divine 
Lord, are not seldom the hiding places of preachers and 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 101 

teachers who have accepted the rationalistic theories of the 
new gospel, and are the deadly enemies of real Christianity. 
More than any other class of men we have observed, ration- 
alists seem to have consciences so dense that they can un- 
disturbed wear the livery of churches and colleges whose 
fundamental faith they deliberately purpose to uproot. 

Rationalistic doctrines. Rationalism rejects the Scrip- 
tures as an infallible guide, and exalts human reason to that 
position. It rejects the supernatural, therefore the Virgin 
Birth, the Resurrection and the Miracles, including God's 
creation of the world. It rejects the substitutionary atone- 
ment of Christ. The Bible is to be judged and believed 
only as any other book. A scientific theory of man's brain 
is stronger with the rationalist than a "thus saith the Lord" 
of revelation. Rationalism bores from within in the churcji- 
es. It is the most unscrupulous of all proselyters, for it 
betrays while it pretends to safeguard and serve. Evan- 
gelicism accepts the Bible as the inspired word of God. It 
believes the Kingdom of God on earth is in the hearts of 
Christ's disciples, and that no external kingdom shall be 
set up until Christ shall come. Rationalism teaches that the 
Kingdom of God is an external kingdom to be set up in 
human society. It is to be done by the Christian churches, 
but is to include those who do not believe on Christ, and 
who, therefore, may perhaps be reached by the Christian 
ethic, but are not actuated by the Christian motive. Evan- 
gelicism teaches that all authority is with God, and is re- 
vealed to man through the Bible. Rationalism makes man's 
reason the basis of authority, and this authority shifts as 
often as his thoughts and desires shift. Rationalism accepts 
evolution as explaining how man got here; evangelicism ac- 



102 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

cepts the record in the first three chapters of Genesis. 
Rationalism encourages and evangelicism rejects the de- 
structive criticism of the Bible. Evolution, rationalism and 
the new theology deny and evangelicism affirms the Fall of 
Man, as recorded in Genesis. The new theology is rational- 
ism setting itself forth among God's people as a dogma for 
their churches. For practical purposes the two are identical. 
By refusing revelation and exalting science and human 
reason, rationalism finds itself under the necessity of giving 
its attention mainly to material things. Therefore it is on 
good terms with materialism, and finds in Unitarianism a 
friend and ally. 

Evolution. According to Haeckel, the doctrine of evolu- 
tion is "the non-miraculous origin and progress of the uni- 
verse". The reader must pardon me for leading him so sud- 
denly into this deep water. It is also too deep for the 
author. I do not hesitate to declare it was really too deep 
for Professor Haeckel. It is one thing to respect a savant 
for his learning. It is another to ask mankind to stand off 
in unquestioning awe when some scientist makes an unsup- 
ported assertion. Read again Haeckel's definition of evolu- 
tion. If our reasoning powers are not unconditionally to 
abdicate before the hypothesis of evolution, how can we do 
otherwise than decide that the non-miraculous making of the 
universe out of nothingness, would itself be a miracle far 
more incredible than the belief that the eternal God made 
all things, as declared in the Bible? To have us get away 
from God and His miracles, evolution would propose the far 
greater miracle of protoplasm making itself from nothing 
and then turning itself by the direction of blind force into 
all the wonderful and varied life which now exists. Evolu- 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 103 

tion asserts that from a nebulous mass of primeval sub- 
stance, the origin of which it never tries to account for, and 
cannot account for, there has come by natural process all 
that we see and know in the heaven above and the earth 
beneath. In "Christianity and Positivism", Professor Tyn- 
dall says of this theory: "Strip it naked and you stand face 
to face with the notion that, not only the ignoble forms of 
life and not only the nobler animal forms of the lion and the 
horse, not only the exquisite mechanism of the human body, 
but the human mind with its emotions, intellect, will and all 
their phenomena, were latent in that first fiery cloud". Pro- 
fessor Le Conte defines it thus: "All things came (1) by 
continuous progressive changes, (2) according to certain 
laws, (3) by means of resident forces." The reader should 
remember the last two words quoted. If everything that 
exists has inside of itself the power to develop always into 
higher forms, then no outer force is necessary, whether it 
be in a jelly fish or a man. That is, God is not necessary. 
The professor who may teach this unproven theory to the 
sons and daughters of American Christians does not need 
to say there is no God. He may put into their plastic, un- 
formed minds the poison of atheism in the most sedate, 
scientific terms, without saying a single startling word. Would 
to God it was possible to arouse the Christian parents of this 
country to the true meaning of this kind of teaching, which 
tens of thousands of America's youth are receiving to-day, 
under the sanction of great scholastic powers and of sup- 
posed wisdom! 

Theistic and atheistic evolution. Christian people have 
always been suspicious of evolution. It is well for those 
who think they have been unduly so to be reminded that 



104 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

they have ample ground for the suspicion. Evolution was 
and is proclaimed to the world, not merely as a theory 
about how the world and its life came to be, but as an ally 
of materialistic philosophy, which has boasted and still 
boasts that it will drive Christianity out of existence. It is 
true that a later school of evolutionists, called theistic or 
modal evolutionists, set it forth as merely the mode by which 
God acted in creation. But the main line of the evolution 
theory is atheistic. Theistic evolution is a branch line built 
by men who felt unwilling to journey on the main line, but 
that they must not walk when other scientists were riding. 
There are evident in nature forces that make for devel- 
opment and variation. Many thoughtlessly call this evolu- 
tion, but it may more accurately be called development. 
The automobiles of 1900 and 1920 differ greatly in devel- 
opment, but "resident forces" in the 1920 model and its 
predecessors do not account for a single one of them. The 
main line evolution theory is that all life is self-evolved from 
an original bit of protoplasm. If the theistic evolutionists 
wish to keep pace with the theory and yet not forsake God, 
counting it God's way of working, they may do so. But 
they have a poor substitute for the simple story of Genesis, 
and they involve themselves needlessly in grave difficulties. 
Will they reject the doctrine of man's fall and of Christ's 
atonement for sin? If God works through evolution with 
man, how could he fall, except upward? How could he 
require for his salvation the atoning merits of the Cross 
of Christ? Why foregather at all with a theory whose main 
use has been to drive God out of His world and make men 
believe they need no Saviour? If they have difficulty, 
therefore, in maintaining good theological standing among 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 105 

evangelical Christians, it is of their own choosing. They 
have no just cause of grievance at evangelicals who view 
their position with suspicion. 

"The making of a man/' Let us contrast the Bible ac- 
count in Genesis of the making of man with that of the 
evolutionist. "And God said, Let us make man in our 
image, and after our likeness; and let them have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creep- 
ing thing that creepeth upon the earth. And so God created 
man in his own image, in the image of God created He 
him; male and female created He them." "And the Lord 
God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living 
soul." Professor Edward Clodd, an authoritative evolu- 
tionist, in his book, "The Making of a Man", pictures how 
certain anthropoid apes were living in the trees of a forest. 
Some of them began to develop characteristics more in- 
telligent and forceful than others. Some remained arboreal 
in habits, while "others developed a way of walking on 
their hind legs, which entirely set free the fore limbs as 
organs of handling and throwing. Whatever were the con- 
ditions which permitted this, the advantage which it gives 
is obvious. It was the making of a man." 

Choosing one's ancestors. Is it not strange that men will 
prefer an unproven theory that makes an ape their ancestor 
to the revelation of God which says God Himself made man 
out of the dust in His own image, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life? Yet many do. Professor Henry 
F. Osborn, in his recent book, "The Origin of Evolution and 
Life," says: "In truth, from the period of the earliest 



106 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

stages of Greek thought man has been eager to discover 
some natural cause of evolution, and to abandon the idea 
of supernatural intervention in the order of nature." This 
is a verification from an unexpected source of Paul's esti- 
mate of the guilt of man, in the first chapter of Romans: 
"That which may be known of God is manifest in men; 
for God has shown Himself unto them. For the invisible 
things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being understood by the things which are made, even 
His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without 
excuse. Because that, when they knew God they glorified 
Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain 
in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and 
changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image 
made like to corruptible man." "And even as they did not 
like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over 
to a reprobate mind." 

Evolution an unproven theory. Remembering that ration- 
alism, with its new theology, draws its inspiration from 
the theory of a Bible-rejecting evolution, and that it is 
to-day maintaining an active propaganda to destroy Chris- 
tianity from within the churches, let us by quoting acknowl- 
edged scientific authorities, remind ourselves that this 
dogma, which would rule out God and Christ and scrap 
the Bible, rests upon nothing more stable than an unproven 
theory. Dr. Etheridge, the Superintendent of the Depart- 
ment of History in the British Museum, has declared: "In 
all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of 
transmutation of species. Nine-tenths of the talk of evolu- 
tionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 107 

wholly unsupported by fact. They adopt a theory and then 
strain the facts to support it." Dr. DeCyon, the Russian 
scientist in "God and Science", says: "Evolution is pure 
assumption." Sir William Dawson, of Montreal, the 
eminent geologist, is quoted by Dr. Griffith Thomas in the 
Sunday School Times as saying that the evolution doctrine 
is one of the strangest phenomena of humanity, a system 
destitute of any shadow of proof. Even Professor Tyndall, 
the English scientist, in a published article, says: "There 
ought to be a clear distinction made between science in the 
state of hypothesis and science in the state of fact. And, 
inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of 
exclusion ought to fall upon the theory of evolution. The 
proofs of it are still wanting, the failures have been lament- 
able and the doctrine is utterly discredited" (article in Fort- 
nightly Review). Doctor Thomas, in the article referred 
to above, quotes the great Haeckel as follows: "Most mod- 
ern investigators of science have come to the conclusion 
that the doctrine of evolution, and particularly Darwinian- 
ism, is an error and cannot be maintained". Prof. H. W. 
Conn, in his "Evolution of To-day", says: "Nothing has 
been positively proved as to the question at issue. From 
its very nature, evolution is beyond proof". A few years ago, 
a son of Charles Darwin, who is a professor in an English 
university, declared before the British Society for the Ad- 
vancement of Science that the evolutionary hypothesis could 
not be proven, and that, as his father taught it, it was 
impossible. Thomas Carlisle called evolution "the gospel of 
dirt". Ruskin said of it, "I have never yet heard one logical 
argument in its favor. I have heard and read many that 
are beneath contempt". (The Eagle's Nest, p. 256.) Ra- 



108 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

tionalistic evolutionists constantly sneer at Christianity as 
being founded on pure assumption, that can appeal only to 
the credulous. But the fact is that evolution itself, in its 
entire hypothesis, is the most colossal assumption the human 
race has been asked to accept in two thousand years. 

"Concensus of scholarship/' These quotations are enough 
to show that many of the greatest scientists utterly reject 
evolution. How then shall we account for the acceptance of 
this theory among many American educators? And how 
shall we explain the zeal of even some ministers of Christ 
who tell us "the consensus of scholarship" forces this doc- 
trine of dirt on humanity? I shall not try to do so, but I 
call attention that there is no consensus of scholarship on the 
subject, and that it is to be supposed that an intelligent man 
who accepts the theory of descent from a brute, instead of 
creation by God, does so because he prefers to have it that 
way. Certainly it is not true merely because some German 
savants teach it to American students and some grave pro- 
fessors in richly-endowed American universities declare it is 
true. If one must be so subservient in spirit as to surrender 
his faith and intellect to imposing authority, which self-re- 
specting men should never do, let us rejoice that we can 
muster imposing names against this atheistic heresy. Yet this 
doctrine of evolution lies at the basis of present-day ration- 
alism, and rationalism, on this flimsy foundation of an un- 
proven theory, is industriously and very influentially at work 
to break down vital Christianity. For that reason only I 
have given so much attention here to evolution. The stu- 
dent, and especially our ministers, should study the subject 
further, and set themselves to break public thought away 
from being mesmerized by the unproven assumptions of 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 109 

rationalists, who would steal away the faith of Christ and 
turn the world over to human wisdom and the devil. 

Scholarship and Darwinian theories. In the last several 
pages the author has presented quotations and arguments 
which may lay him open to the criticism of not knowing that 
the best modern scientific scholarship has rejected the Dar- 
winian theory of evolution. But this work is mainly for 
students who are confronting some of the injurious results of 
belief in evolution, but who have had small opportunity to 
know its arguments at first hand. Many of these do not 
know that modern scientists are finding it necessary to give 
up Darwinianism, and it has seemed desirable, therefore, to 
set forth some arguments that are common-place to a rela- 
tively small number of our people. Discredited though it is, 
theories of life and religion based upon its teachings are 
still playing havoc with the masses of the public. And 
equally to be considered is the fact that thousands of men 
who teach science and who by the people are considered 
authorities on the subject, are still patching up the weak 
places in the evolution theory with the apparent purpose of 
holding on to it, though bereft of confidence in some of its 
earlier contentions. In a word, this text is a brief treatment 
for the people, not for scholars, though it seeks to profit by 
the results of sound scholarship. 

Bishop Candler on Shorter Bible. Commenting upon the 
recently-issued Shorter Bible, Bishop Warren A. Candler 
of the Southern Methodist Church, says: "This sapient set 
purpose to pick out the kernels of the Scriptures and throw 
the shells away, so that 'the present age' may have a sort of 
prepared and pre-digested food suitably flavored to appeal to 
its jaded and capricious taste". This Shorter Bible cuts out 



110 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

two-thirds of the Old Testament and one-third of the New 
Testament. It omits more than four thousand verses of the 
New Testament, including the Great Commission, the twenty- 
fourth chapter of Matthew, and John the Baptist's words: 
"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of 
the world". The part of the third chapter of Romans which 
teaches human depravity is discarded. The remarkable 
thing about the editorial group is that it includes the Senior 
Secretary of the Publication Department of the International 
Committee of the Y. M. C. A. and a similarly prominent offi- 
cial of the Y. W. C. A. Bishop Candler speaks no more 
strongly than all loyal and intelligent evangelical Christians 
will approve when he declares: "It is a grief to many of us 
who gave warm support to the Y. M. C. A. in former years to 
gave warm support to the Y. M. C. A. in former years to 
note that it is rapidly becoming more an organization of re- 
creation than religion. If it identifies itself with this ration- 
alistic publication called the Shorter Bible, its utter undoing 
will soon be complete. It is time for its leaders to call a 
halt on liberalism. The evangelical churches made the 
Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A., and these churches will 
withdraw their support when it becomes clear that the Chris(- 
tian character and Christian purposes of these institutions 
have been renounced". 

Substitutes culture for salvation. In the Review and Ex- 
positor, for October, 1920, President Edgar Y. Mullins, of 
the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, had an article 
in which he points out that evolution was the principle which 
guided German education to kultur and disaster. This sub- 
stitution of culture for salvation is central in the teaching 
of the new theology. President Mullins says further of the 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 111 

German experiment in rationalism: "The chief agency em- 
ployed was education. Thus the doctrines of regeneration, 
spiritual freedom, the worth of the individual, and all the 
other cardinal principles of the Christian religion sank int» 
decay, and European civilization underwent an eclipse. The 
great war was the direct result of this conception of life". 
And the same anti-Christ teaching would produce the same 
result in America, if it was allowed to go far enough. There 
is salvation in Jesus Christ alone. The modern movement to 
substitute education plus rationalism is foredoomed to fail. 

Decries doctrine. It is not possible to trail the expounders 
of rationalistic theology through all the departments of their 
propaganda. A few samples will show that these champion 
denouncers of the worth of doctrines in Christian progress, 
themselves have a clear-cut set of scientific doctrines which 
they expound in season and out of season. It is only in relig- 
ion that they applaud known-nothingism. This denunciation 
of evangelical doctrines is one phase of the rationalistic bor- 
ing from within. If they can scare preachers and teachers 
from expounding the great doctrines of faith, there will 
be little left but a variable and inarticulate sentimentality. 
This would afford the best soil in which rationalism could 
sow its own doctrinal tares, which it creates with all the 
pertinacity and arrogant intolerence with which it credits 
evangelicals, in its efforts to seduce them from vital 
faith. It is about time for evangelical Christians to show up 
the dastardly source of most of the hue and cry which is 
to-day heard against doctrinal teaching. Christian doctrine 
is essentially Christian teaching, the Greek word being the 
same for both. Without doctrinal teaching Christianity 
would die. Whatever weakly sentimental Christians may 



112 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

think about it, the rationalists know very well that for Chris- 
tianity to give up doctrine is to destroy its power, and that 
is what they want to do. 

Church Union. Among the most significant means of ra- 
tionalistic propaganda for tearing down the Christian bodies 
are Unionism and Social Service. Both are popular with 
the untaught and non-Christian public. In that lies their 
availability for the purposes of rationalism. There is a 
truth in both, and that makes each the fitter to use for mis- 
leading the people, after properly compounding the truth 
with untruth. Unity among God's people is always to be 
desired. But it is spiritual rather than material. All Chris- 
tians have it to the extent that they are one with Christ. But 
the Union Movement, which rationalism endorses with all its 
Christ-denying soul, wants outward, organized union. This 
would be useful mainly for impressing the world as an im- 
posing spectacle. It is perfectly consistent for rationalism 
to want outward Christian union. By the same token, it is 
desirable for the followers of Jesus to exalt spiritual oneness 
with Christ rather than outward uniformity, with its played- 
down faith and its autocracy. 

Is enamored of social service. So with social service. 
Socialism works from the circumference inward, Christianity 
from the center outward. The one believes in reformation; 
the other in regeneration. Christianity of the old-fashioned 
kind has wrought about all that has been done for social im- 
provement. But that is not enough, says the rationalist. And 
he speaks truly, though with a sinister purpose . We need 
more social service. But we will never get it by turning our 
churches into welfare clubs. Their function is primarily and 
always spiritual. They must make better men to make a bet- 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 113 

ter world. They are the only agencies which make men bet- 
ter by bringing them to God. That is their speciality and they 
have no competitors. If all the rest of the community, the 
rationalists included, are incompetent to do the lesser tasks 
of mediating and planning and voting for and securing social 
justice, it is a pitiful confession. But even then the churches 
should not give up their one great task of bringing men to 
Christ and nurturing them in Christ. For if they succeed, the 
welfare work will get itself done by the power of the Chris- 
tian ethic in society, while if they do not there is no hope left 
for this world, except such as may be found in the foolish 
doctrines of rationalism and evolution, which is none at ajl. 
When the new theology shows its power to win a single soul 
to Christ, it will be time enough for it to lecture Christian 
churches about saving society. But not all the rationalists in 
American can show a single soul the way to salvation. 

Poses as having a broader love. The rationalist, whether 
representing church union or the social gospel, or whether 
a pastor or a professor, usually adopts the pose of liberality. 
This part wins the thoughtless crowd and doubtless makes 
the speaker well pleased with himself. But, instead of being 
more Christian, it is anti-Christian in spirit. The rationalist 
often quotes the following lines: 

He drew a circle to shut me out, 
Infidel, heretic, a thing to flout; 
But love and I had the wit to win, 
. We drew a circle and took him in. 

The truth-lover, who has been trying to save people from the 
fatuous sophistries of the new theology, is supposed to 
grovel on the ground with a sense of his narrowness when 



114 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

he hears that rhyme. But he should rather answer the 
egotistic liberalist with the following words of Mrs. J. H. 
Chapman, in the Watchman-Examiner, of New York: 

There is a circle around my life; 
"Master of Truth" was the builder's name. 
If in its shelter he has no part 
Never a wrong can my brother claim. 

Glad i9 the welcome within its wall, 
Wide are its portals as truth may be. 
Here is the magic to make us one — 
Truth and truth only can make men free. 

Rationalism and education. The quotation elsewhere 
from Doctor Mullins indicates how rationalism depends upon 
education as its chief means of propagation. Given the 
theories of evolution through inherent forces and materialis- 
tic philosophy in the educational system of America, ration- 
alism takes strong courage. Unitarianism is respectable and 
sedate, but it must be moved to enthusiasm over the attitude 
now assumed in high educational quarters in this country. It 
was thought that we would learn a lesson from Germany's 
desertion of faith for science and rationalism, and we have. 
But many professors of science in American educational in- 
stitutions have not yet found it out. It is theirs to produce 
rapid changes in the intellectual attitude of American youth. 
But it does not follow that they themselves have equal facil- 
ity in readjusting their hypotheses. This author hat no wish 
to speak lightly of dignities and powers. But neither he 
nor any other earnest follower of Christ can look without 
deep concern on the present educational situation in Amer- 
ica, as it relates to vital Christianity. The general exaltation 
of material science and the losing fight being made in many 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 115 

places by the liberal arts are themselves ominous. When 
poetry, literature, the languages and the other humanities 
are crowded out by mathematics, biology, geology and the 
other sciences, it will be a sad day for this country. The old 
theory was to make a man who could and would make a 
living. The present seems to be to prepare a man to make 
money. One need not decry the value of vocational train- 
ing, but he must magnify the broader training of the per- 
sonality, if he would foster a worthy ideal of education. 

Infecting colleges and seminaries. The leaven of ration- 
alism is working in many American universities and colleges, 
and even theological seminaries. Dr. G. W. McPherson, of 
New York City, Pastor of the Baptist Tent Evangel, has 
written a book on the subject of rationalism in American 
educational institutions. He makes the startling disclosure 
that the doctrine of evolution in some form is taught, not 
only in State colleges, but in a large number of the denomi- 
national schools. His exhibit includes letters from the presi- 
dents of 2 1 1 institutions, in which Dr. McPherson finds that 
most of them declare that they teach the doctrine 
of evolution. In an editorial in The Presbyterian, of 
September 30, 1 920, Dr. D. S. Kennedy tells of a theological 
seminary of an evangelical denomination, whose teachings 
came under his immediate observation. He declares that 
the professor of Homiletics in this seminary has circulated a 
pamphlet in which he belittles the Cross of Christ, saying 
that it will never redeem the world. The professor of Theol- 
ogy in that same seminary is doing all in his power to have 
the creed of his denomination reconstructed and harmonized 
with "the thought and spirit of this age". 



116 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Baptists do not escape. In an editorial in the Religious 
Herald, of September 30, 1920, Dr. R. H. Pitt calls attention 
to the necessity of safeguarding Christian and denomina- 
tional faith, and gives the following story from an eye- 
witness of an occurence, for whose ability and truthfulness 
Doctor Pitt vouches : A young man, a graduate of a Baptist 
college and of a Baptist theological seminary, was under 
examination for appointment as a foreign missionary. Asked 
by the committee as to what he thought of Christ, the young 
preacher promptly replied: "He is divine just as you and I 
are divine — no more, no less". After some lively discussion, 
the majority voted to send him. Needless to say this was 
not our Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. Baptists 
have for years had reason to question some of the teachings 
emanating from Chicago University. I have before me a 
work on the atonement by three of the theological profes- 
sors of this institution. The work pursues what these gen- 
tlemen call the historical method. It is of the destructive 
type of higher criticism. They find that in the atonement 
wrought by Christ He did not ransom the soul of the believ- 
ing sinner or become his substitute ("Atonement" p. 291). 
They hold to the moral influence theory. "The followers of 
Christ must become sharers of His inward life to receive 
the benefits of His redemptive work" (p. 286). That is, 
one must be saved by having Christ in him, before the Cross 
can count for him, even as a moral influence. Paul and our 
Lord taught differently about the value of the Cross, but the 
professors dispose of that difficulty in a way satisfactory to 
themselves. Their theory works into the hands of modern 
rationalism beautifully. It is not even new, but neither is 
rationalism. Both have on new clothes, however, and both 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 117 

are as imposing to the unitiated public as a city Negro ex- 
hibiting his graces at a country camp meeting before the 
wondering eyes of the blacks from the cotton fields. 

The gravity of the problem. Now let the student suppose 
that preachers trained in such theological schools, and teach- 
ers trained in universities in which natural science is set 
forth as accounting for about everything, and the revelation 
of God and the spiritual capacities of man for almost 
nothing. Suppose also that college professors trained in such 
universities, have imbibed this doctrine, as many of them 
have done, and that they are allowed to go on, in their 
vantage points, training the youth of America. How long 
will it be before the intellectual life of the nation shall be 
honey-combed with atheism? With preachers in the pulpit 
to feed the people on the non-nutritious husks of rationalis- 
tic philosophy, and college graduates in the pew and in the 
learned professions and business leadership who have been 
nurtured on the same poisonous diet, how long does the stu- 
dent think the churches of Christ can save this country from 
becoming atheistic among the intellectuals and grossly im- 
moral and criminal among the masses? A due considera- 
tion of the gravity of the problems suggested by these ques- 
tions make all the explanation necessary concerning why 
this material is introduced into a mission study book. 

Baptists and rationalism. At the Northern Baptist Con- 
vention in 1920 resolutions were passed for a committee of 
that body to examine the teaching in the colleges and theo- 
logical seminaries of the body, as related to the teachings of 
the Bible. The fact that it was even thought necessary to 
appoint such a committee indicates that they thought it 
probable that many of these schools have been infected with 



118 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

the virus of rationalism. It is currently reported that most of 
their theological schools have in their faculties one or more 
professors who have become voices for the rationalistic inter- 
pretation of Christianity. Our Southern Baptist seminaries 
are until now above reproach. In fact, their stand for the old 
paths has in it much of the same heroic quality that Southern 
Baptists as a body showed toward the Interchurch Move- 
ment, which itself squints in the same general direction in 
which rationalism is going. Our Baptist colleges have not 
all been entirely free from infection. They have been 
dependent to a considerable extent on rationalistic universi- 
ties for their teachers. So far, however, the poisonous teach- 
ing has usually been ousted so soon as discovered. We 
should give our colleges our prayers and support and love. 
At the same time, we should let them clearly understand that 
their liberty to pursue truth is complete, but only so long as 
they pursue truth as bond-servants of Christ. Any professor 
whose "p urs mt of truth" leads him to oppose Christ and reve. 
lation, must be made distinctly to understand that his place tc 
pursue truth cannot longer be in a salaried position in an 
institution maintained by Baptists for the Christian educa- 
tion of their sons and daughters. This clear understanding 
will be better for our colleges. Their boards of trustees are 
responsible to the denomination, to see that its principles are 
enforced. One grows weary at the attitude of martyrdom 
some rationalistic teachers assume toward strictures from 
our people. For they are not martyrs. Such a teacher in a 
Christian school is merely securing money under false pre- 
tenses. Common honesty would require him to resign. 

Prussian philosophy must be driven out. In this chapter 
the author has sought to express himself frankly and yet to 



THE VIRUS OF RATIONALISM 119 

avoid untempered language. But the more the purpose of 
rationalism grows upon him, the more unspeakably amazed 
he is at the colossal presumption of its purpose. Stripped 
of all its obscure verbiage, it means and can mean only that 
there are potent and highly reputed forces at work in this 
Christian nation to destroy Christianity and substitute for it 
an ethical code which infidel intellectuals shall measure out 
to us. Prussianism was a spirit, but also a doctrine. It was 
the doctrine that man was his own master, that his physical 
and intellectual force was the greatest thing, that he evolved 
from an animal and is always advancing, that he is his own 
saviour, that the strong must rule and the weak perish. In 
brief, Prussianism applied to statecraft the identical prin- 
ciple that rationalism applies to religion. It was rationalistic 
and evolutionistic and rejected the Bible. While America 
slept Prussian university professors sowed these traitorous 
tares in the minds of young American scholars, and now 
many of these, in high and honorable places, are poisoning 
the minds of American youth with the miserable doctrines 
wherewith the Hun military autocracy sought to destroy the 
world. In another chapter we shall consider the question of 
education. But we may say here that, if the American public 
it helpless to defend itself against the work of Prussian 
atheistic philosophy in American education, the American 
public is in tragic need of being shocked out of its fateful 
paralysis. When America declared war on Germany, steps 
were promptly taken to protect the water supply of the cities 
of the country from being poisoned by a malignant enemy. 
But men who poison the souls of America's youth are more 
dangerous enemies to our country than any external enemy 
could possibly be. The fruitage of rationalistic teaching in 



120 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

America only needs growing opportunity to make it what it 
was in Germany. Let alone it means lawlessness, revolution, 
anarchy. The people of God are able to drive this mon- 
strous traitor to America's faith and character into the 
wilderness of oblivion. But they have no easy task. They 
cannot do it by ignoring the malignity of the enemy who is 
attacking Christianity at its roots. They cannot do it by 
softly side-stepping the responsibility of contending for the 
faith, fearing the world's enmity to vertebrate Christian doc- 
trines. When the World War came, some proud and selfish 
business men in England and America advertised, "Business 
as usual". But soon civilization came to realize that its 
foundations were being undermined and that the abyss of 
anarchy was about to engulf mankind; then these "business- 
as-usual" slackers were promptly taught that there was no 
other business any more that did not merge itself into the 
grim business of war. Something like that must be brought 
home to men to whom the oracles of God are committed, if 
we are to drive out, root and branch, the Christ-rejecting 
rationalism of this day. It is no time for theological trim- 
mers and slackers. 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER V. 

Why should Christian people understand rationalism? 

Show that rationalism leads to despair. 

Show that the exaltation of material science without larger 
souls is a peril. 

Show how rationalism bores from within among Christian 
bodies. 

What does rationalism teach? 

What is the theory of evolution about the origin of matter and 
life? 

How do theistic and atheistic evolutionists differ? 

How does evolution say man was made? 

Quote Professor Osborn to show that men have wanted to be- 
lieve evolution rather than revelation. 

Quote authorities to show evolution is an unproven theory. 

Show that there is no "consensus of scholarship". 

Show that rationalism minimizes the Bible. 

Show how rationalism would substitute culture for Christianity. 

How have Social Service and Church Union worked to help 
rationalism? 

Show how the rationalist poses as being very liberal and 
wherein such liberality fails. 

Show how rationalism propagates itself through education. 

Give evidences of its presence in American institutions of learn- 
ing. 

Show that Baptists have not entirely escaped its power. 

Show what makes the problem grave. 

Show that Southern Baptist education has largely escaped the 
virus until now. 

Why must this Prussian philosophy be driven out? 

Show that preachers and teachers cannot without disloyalty re- 
fuse to defend Christian doctrines against its enemies. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST. 

Few entering the ministry. The ministry comprises the 
men who are ordained of God for the spiritual leadership 
and instruction of the churches. Preachers and the forces 
that gather around them are the saving leaven of society. 
The work of making Christian the people and the moral 
quality of American life is conditioned mainly by the number 
and spiritual gifts of the preachers. Therefore the falling off 
of candidates for the ministry, which has been going on in 
this country for nearly two decades, is an ominous sign, and 
demands closer scrutiny by God's people than they have 
given it. In 1900 there were 8,009 theological students in 
training in this country and 12,500 law students. In 1916 
the theological students numbered 12,000, an increase of 
fifty percent, while the law students numbered 23,000, an 
increase of nearly 100 percent. In 1885 we had 120 theo- 
logical students to every million of population ; in 1915 only 
1 1 to each million. Meantime public education had made 
rapid progress. In fifteen years the number of students in 
colleges and universities doubled, and in five years the num- 
ber studying agriculture increased a thousand percent. It 
is absolutely necessary that preachers should have as much 
general education as the more intelligent among those to 
whom they preach, and much more knowledge of theology. 
But the facts indicate that theological education is not keep- 
ing pace with the education of the people. 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 123 

Situation in the South. More evangelical and rural in 
its complexion than the rest of the country, the South was 
slowest to register a decline in candidates for the ministry, 
but it is now doing so. Between 1 890 and 1916 the decline 
of Southern Baptist ministers, as compared with the number 
of the members in the churches, was ten percent. This is 
not enough in itself to be conclusive. But since 1916 there 
has been a falling off which has attracted anxious attention 
in many sections. From every section of the South come 
reports that scores of churches are unable to get pastors. 
This leanness of the ministerial supply is also alarming 
Southern Methodists. In a recent number of New Orleans 
Christian Advocate, Bishop Collins Denny writes: "Seri- 
ous beyond general appreciation is the present condition of 
the church. The last General Minutes show for four An- 
nual Conferences 120 charges without regular pastors. All 
of these churches need to take care of them men of the 
first order of consecration, ability and adaptability." In 
Alabama 200 Baptist churches are reported without pastors. 
A report from Dr. F. S. Groner, Corresponding Secretary, 
of the Texas Board of Missions, shows 730 pastorless Bap- 
tist churches in Texas. A survey recently made in Virginia 
by Dr. J. W. Cammack, Field Secretary of the Baptist State 
Mission Board, showed that there were 244 pastorless 
churches in that State, out of the total of 1,132. That is, 
more than one church in five is pastorless. Dr. Cammack 
writes: "This subject is attracting serious attention in Vir- 
ginia. It is so serious that, while our membership has gained 
80,000 in the last twenty-five years, we now have only about 
the same number of young men preparing for the ministry 
that they had twenty-five years ago.*' This distressing lack 
is equally observable in other States. 



124 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Causes for the decline. A detailed analysis of the causes 
for this decline is not here intended. Conditions in the en- 
vironment discussed in preceding chapters largely account 
for it, and remedial measures to be presented will suggest 
other causes. Here it may be fit to say that it has resulted 
from modern life being so wrapped up in activities that men 
have found little time for prayer and meditation. In our 
churches we have developed a degree of activity never be- 
fore equalled. In some sense this has been a response to 
the intense activity of the material environment. There 
was need for most of our churches to develop higher stand- 
ards of activity. But it is also necessary that they shall 
always maintain in their experience, as well as in their 
teachings, the supremacy of the spiritual. Perhaps God is 
allowing the present dearth in the ministerial supply partly 
to teach them that they must wait on Him in prayer for 
power, and for ability to discern and value spiritual worth. 
The war was a time of doing things. Most men had to 
think while they acted, rather than before. But war is 
abnormal, and it has reacted on the churches with some of 
its abnormalities. There have been recent calls for special 
seasons of prayer, but small attention has usually been given 
to them. 

Activity rather than spirituality. In our religious gather- 
ings the programs have become strenuous affairs, seeking to 
give place to the presentation of many excellent activities. 
Aware of the incongruity of putting activities always to the 
front, we have frequently sought to win back to better bal- 
ance by injecting a period for devotional exercises into the 
strenuous programs, but the accepted necessity of wooing 
the Spirit by clock and program, has left more to be desired 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 125 

in the interest of a proper magnifying of prayer and medita- 
tion. This strenuosity in the affairs of the Kingdom, rather 
than in magnifying devotional and teaching values, has 
even penetrated our District Associations, those co-operative 
bodies which most beautifully reflect the Baptist spirit of 
fellowship, fellow-helpfulness and democracy. Doing great 
things for God is inspiring and helpful, but the engineer 
who would open wide the throttle for speed, had better also 
keep an eye on his fireman, the steam gauge and the coal 
pile, lest his impressive, careering train ingloriously stall at 
the foot of the first steep grade along the line. There are 
hopeful tokens that Southern Baptists are beginning to 
think on this matter of power rather than the wide-open 
throttle. When they do so think, we shall come to under- 
stand better the spirit and power of prayer which underlies 
the ministerial supply and which alone can keep us in 
unison with the spirit and purpose of God. 

Preaching has not failed. Preachers of the gospel have 
been and are the foremost men in civilization. This has 
been because they are the spokesmen of God. America 
owes more to preachers than she does to her statesmen or 
to any other professional class. They have not necessarily 
always been the most intellectual class. But they have dealt 
in a message which had in it the authority and power of 
God. This country was born and started on its course 
Christian mainly through its preachers. Its frontiers were 
subdued from rowdyism to civilization almost entirely by 
preachers. Its great marts of trade are held together by 
moral forces made possible by the faithful work of preach- 
ers. Preachers furnished the inspiration that developed the 
educational system of America. They have led in every 



126 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

movement for moral reform and justice. In our Southern 
Baptist life we have developed many noble laymen. But 
what group of men can we name who have meant so much 
to society and to thousands of individuals as preachers like 
Jeter, Broadus, Furman, Carroll, Boyce, Hatcher, Eaton, 
Graves, Mell, Tichenor, Willingham, Tupper, Warren, Wink- 
ler, Manly, Hawthorne, Taylor, and additional men now 
gone to their reward, and many other still in harness? The 
preachers have not only led to personal salvation hundreds 
of thousands; they have reared in their own homes children 
who have given America its best average of worthy citizen- 
ship. The popular saying is false concerning preachers' 
children turning out badly. Mr. Rodger Babson, who is an 
authority on statistics, in a recent bulletin, says that the 
business enterprises of America are run by two percent of 
those connected with them. Of this two percent he states 
that four percent are the sons of bankers, eight of business 
men, twenty-five of educators, and thirty of preachers. He 
also says that the number of preachers in the country is 
smaller than that of bankers, business men, or educators, 
and that the sons of preachers generally begin life without 
capital and work their way up from the bottom. 

Public opinion has failed. An undiscerning public opin- 
ion does not always honor the preachers, but God does. He 
uses them to produce among men the highest values the race 
possesses. The fate of the world depends more upon the 
churches of Christ than upon the American government and 
all other governments, and the prophet of the message 
committed to the churches is the God-called preacher. 
Many voices that are supposed to set forth modern public 
opinion dissent from this view. Mr. John Spargo, a social- 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 127 

istic writer, was recently quoted broadly as saying that 
preaching is not "a man-sized job". It is worth noting that 
Mr. Spargo is a socialist, and has set himself to the idea of 
salvation by social betterment. Such doctrinaires are usually 
impatient with the preachers of the mystery of the faith of 
Christ, except as they may be induced to desert their proper 
work as prophets of the Unseen, to become workers in the 
camp set to capture the present social order and turn it into 
Utopia. It is true that the printing press, the school master, 
and the business leader have taken from the preacher some 
of the functions that once belonged to him. But that does 
not really lessen the value of his proper vocation. It opens 
up greater possibilities for service in his proper spiritual 
ministries, by relieving him of duties which dispersed his 
spiritual energies, while it made him a greater public figure. 
It is not remarkable that men who do not appreciate the 
spiritual elements in the minister's calling, nor the conflict 
and severe test of manhood involved in being faithful mes- 
sengers of God to a sinful and heedless world, should con- 
sider that there is no man-sized job in the spiritual work of 
the ministry. But, rightly viewed, even their skepticism is 
an added token of the crying need of strong hearts in the 
service which the ministers of Christ and they only render as 
witnesses to the authority and spiritual mandates of Al- 
mighty God. 

Praying for preachers. The first thing that demands our 
attention, in connection with the need of more ministers, is 
the command of our Lord Jesus that we shall pray for them. 
"But when He saw the multitude, He was moved with com- 
passion on them, because they fainted and were scattered 
abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then He saith unto 



128 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

His disciples, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are 
few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will 
send forth laborers into His harvest." Men are called into 
the ministry, just as they are converted, in answer to the 
prayers of the people of God. Cold formalism in churches 
and prayerlessness and selfish living in homes will effectively 
cut off the supply of young men who shall give themselves 
to God as heralds of the Cross. A stumbling, doubting faith, 
or a life so full of activities that it does not reflect on spir- 
itual values, will not wrestle with God for laborers in His 
harvest. How will Southern Baptists satisfactorily account 
to themselves for the fact that they have so seldom prayed 
to God in the churches and conventions to call men into the 
ministry? I think there is no doubt that we have not gener- 
ally given this command of our Lord serious thought. I 
have even heard ministers whom I honored and loved argue 
that we had too many preachers; that if we had fewer, the 
churches would not make so discreditable a show toward 
supporting them. There is an angle from which this argu- 
ment may be made impressive. It has to do with the large 
number of untrained men we have had who received ordina- 
tion but did not give their lives to the work. It is probable 
that this situation, which has reflected no credit upon Bap- 
tists, has been indirectly responsible for the almost universal 
dearth of prayers in our churches for God to call more 
laborers into His harvest. Men seemed to feel they had 
rather have no more preachers, than to have more shirkers. 
Therefore they did not pray for them. 

Preachers who do not preach. This presence among Bap- 
tists of so many preachers who do not preach merits special 
attention. If it did no other evil than stop the prayers of 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 129 

churches for more preachers who will preach, it would re- 
quire our attention. The national Religious Census of 1916 
gives Southern Baptists a total of a few less than 1 6,000 or- 
dained ministers. The statistical record in the Convention 
Minutes of 1920 gives approximately 9,500 Southern Bap- 
tist pastors. If we shall suppose 500 more of our ministers 
are engaged in such special service as teaching, editing pa- 
pers, or acting as secretaries or field workers of the denomi- 
national agencies, we still have about 6,000, or thirty-seven 
percent, of our ordained ministers who are not in the work 
they said God called them to perform. Allowing for the 
veterans worn out in the service, we still have not fewer 
than one Baptist preacher in every three in the South who is 
not preaching. He is not even going to a single church one 
time a month. Perhaps a thousand of those given in our 
statistical table have little more than this casual relation 
with real pastoral service. Unquestionably careless ordina- 
tion by thoughtless churches has been responsible for much 
of this awkward situation, and it is no purpose of these 
chapters to discuss the weakness of our democracy at certain 
points. But these thousands of preachers who do not preach, 
many of whom perhaps cannot preach, are only one side of 
an awkward situation in which we find ourselves. The other 
side is the several thousands of Baptist churches in the 
South that need and want pastors and cannot find them. 
There are still other thousands of places where men who 
know Jesus Christ and have a passion to exalt Him before 
men could build up new churches. There are millions of 
people in the South either reached by no preacher at all or 
only by the vendors of false faiths. This is said with no 
thought of reflection on the secretaries of our mission boards, 



130 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

who are more keenly aware of the truth of the above state- 
ment than any other group of men, but who are limited in 
their saving work by the lack of funds and of available 
preachers. 

Children of prayer. The abundant supply of preachers 
God has given our Baptist churches has perhaps made them 
neglect to pray for more preachers. They have not felt the 
lack. They have been served by a noble company of men, 
many of them great in their gifts and ten times as many 
great in character and faith. It would be most unfortu- 
nate for us to allow the awkward situation which thought- 
lessness in many ordinations has brought upon us, to make 
us forget how greatly God has blessed us in our ministry. 
That ministry has wrought so well that it has been able to 
carry the dead weight of not a few who wrought not at all 
in spiritual labors, without losing a well-merited prestige 
among all who have been in a position to know their worth. 
Meantime, we will do well to remind ourselves that these 
faithful shepherds have been without exception the children 
of prayer. What many of our churches lacked, godly moth- 
ers filled in. Behind nearly every preacher in a Southern 
Baptist pulpit to-day was a praying mother. If one could 
pierce the reserve behind which the more sacred personal 
emotions and experiences habitually retire, and could get a 
story from the mothers of the men who are now God's her- 
alds, he could write a book that would thrill the hearts of 
all good people. Only today I asked a comrade if he would 
give me the story of his call to the ministry. His reply was 
that it was so wrapped up in his mother's love and prayers 
that he could not tell it. Spurgeon's father told the illus- 
trious son that many were the times he had prayed his boy 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 131 

might be a preacher. The father of Dr. E. Y. Mullins, after 
the son had entered the ministry, told him that father and 
mother had prayed earnestly from the day of his birth that 
God might honor their boy by putting him into the ministry. 
Next to the mothers and fathers, the ministers themselves 
have done most to lead young men to decide for this 
sacred calling, to whom one should add an occasional Chris- 
tian teacher. 

The Christian home. The most efficient human factor in 
leading men into the ministry is the Christian home. It 
must be a real home, where the members of the family react 
upon each other in the intimate relations of life. Every 
reader will remember such homes, into which the excitement 
and hardness of the world did not penetrate, where love had 
its best opportunity to perform its sacred functions in shar- 
ing and helping and sympathizing and understanding. Mod- 
ern living conditions are making it difficult to maintain such 
homes, but no sacrifice is too great for parents to make in 
order to provide such homes for their children. To exchange 
this sacred opportunity for clubs, social formalities, and 
amusements is to sell a pearl of great price for the cheap 
sparkle of glass and tinsel. From real homes, homes of 
God-fearing men and praying mothers, we may look for our 
preachers to come. From such they have always come. The 
present alarming decline in preachers is a token of the de- 
cline in the Christian home. On every account, and particu- 
larly because of its bearing on the supply of ministers, our 
pulpits ought to maintain unfailing teaching looking to the 
maintaining of a Christian home-life among their people. Dr. 
John R. Mott, in writing his book, "Future Leadership of the 
Church", examined the biographies of 128 ministers, and 



132 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

found that all but nine came from homes that were pro- 
nouncedly favorable to the decision to devote one's life to 
the ministry. Of 400 prominent ministers in America who 
answered his inquiry as to the causes leading them into the 
ministry, more than four-fifths of them assigned as the chief 
factor the influence of Christian home-life. We may safely 
put down Christian home-life as the outstanding influence on 
which an adequate ministerial supply depends. Our church- 
es must set their faces like flint against every force that 
tends to tear down the home. 

Why the country furnishes our preachers. It is well known 
that nearly all our preachers came from country homes and 
country churches. Among the causes we should probably 
place first the fact that in the country the Christian home 
has had its best chance to do its work. The isolation which 
shut the country home off from the world was not all bad. 
It shut out a lot of distractions and superficialities and gave 
youthful minds an opportunity to dream dreams, into which 
the Spirit of the Most High sometimes came, giving them 
wisdom before their time concerning the things best worth 
while. Just as the streams that turn the machinery of the 
world rise in the quiet places, far up in the mountains, so the 
main sources of the Christian ministry are in the solitary 
places, for in these places the voices of earth are not so 
clamant as to shut out the call of God. Among Southern 
Baptists it has become known that the Southern mountains 
have produced far more than their proportion of our minis- 
ters. Southern Baptists have never ceased to thank moun- 
tain Baptists for producing the silver-tongued McConnell 
and the eloquent Truett. They are coming now to recognize 
the exceptional power and devotion of scores of other 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 133 

preachers from the same source. Dreaming and living and 
learning amid the great, silent, glorious mountains, and the 
love of a simple and sacred home-life, they came to see God, 
and to understand what life means, as God sees it. With 
souls aflame and hearts unafraid, these are fountains through 
which flow the divine life of Christ, watering this day hun- 
dreds of thousands of thirsty souls. The Home Mission 
Board Mountain Mission Schools have lifted up into better 
things the whole Highland civilization. They have returned 
to the denomination a hundred-fold for all it put into them, 
in the hundreds of splendid men of God they have started 
toward the ministry. In a just balance between mountain 
Baptists and other Baptists, they have more than repaid 
all we have done for them. The same is true in striking 
a balance between country and city. God has called 
some preachers from the city. He will call more, if 
we will make there the homes and other conditions con- 
ducive to the growth of preachers. But we must ever depend 
upon the country churches and homes for most of our 
preachers, and we shall do wisely to aid in every possible 
way the maintenance of a country life and country churches 
from which there shall be no diminution of the blessed 
supply of men who can interpret God to our race. 

What preachers and churches can do. Next to the homes, 
perhaps the most potent agency for leading young men to 
decide for the ministry is the pastor. Especially in the 
country, the average young man is not likely to decide 
early on what shall be his life-work. In the towns and 
cities a job and salary often decide the matter, and shut 
out a due consideration of the subject. But the country 
lad who shows premonitions of gifts that would fit him 



134 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

for the ministry is almost sure to be open to the suggestions 
of the trusted pastor. In fact, hundreds of these boys are 
hungry for such counsel. They are not sure of themselves, 
and rely readily upon suggestions from a source recognized 
as competent. In the prayers and preaching in the churches, 
the pastors should hold up the ministerial calling for the 
young men, both before God and men. This and judicious 
counsel to individual boys will accomplish large results. 
Scores of preachers trace their decision to become ministers 
to the counsel and guidance of wise pastors. Similar to the 
opportunity of the pastor is that of the church. There are 
churches that have a fine record for men sent into the 
ministry. Such a one is the Citadel Square Baptist Church, 
of Charleston, South Carolina. It has sent out a large 
number of preachers, though a city church. The author 
has been in that church circle and can testify to the beau- 
tiful spirit of respect and honor for the ministry which 
characterizes it. God will honor the church which thus 
honors His chosen servants. He will not often call a preacher 
from a church that criticise preachers, and honors them, 
if at all, rather for their prominence or other worldly cir- 
cumstances than from a fact that they are God's chosen 
messengers. Worldly wisdom has its reward, but it wins 
nothing at all in the field of grace and love. 

Local church mission work. Churches can do much to- 
ward turning their young men to the ministry by en- 
couraging them to work in the Sunday-schools and Young 
People's organizations. Often of even more influence would 
be putting these young men out to conduct missions of the 
local church. In such work as this the neophyte has a 
better opportunity to realize in his own soul the sense of 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 135 

blessedness that comes from trying to help neglected people 
by bringing them to Christ. Under God, such service as 
this in his high school and college days, judiciously urged 
upon him by trusted leaders, had much to do with bringing 
the author of this book to decide for the ministry. As 
between service in a church which has many teaching 
workers and in a mission where the people are hungry and 
appreciative even of the crumbs that are immature youth 
may bring, the mission is preferable. One often wonders 
why local churches do not look about them more than they 
do for needy places and establish missions of their own. 
Particularly in college towns, where the Christian students 
may be pressed into service, local churches have a rich 
opportunity to reach even the most neglected sections of 
the community, while at the same time they are helping 
young men to decide for the ministry, by giving them a 
taste of the blessedness of bringing Christ to the people. 
Denominational colleges. Denominational colleges were 
the first established throughout America and their primary 
purpose was to educate preachers. They have done, are 
doing and always must do by far the larger part of this 
high service. A recent investigation in eleven theological 
seminaries showed that ninety-six students came from State 
institutions and 1,077 from denominational colleges. An- 
other similar investigation showed that, out of 1,821 theo- 
logues, 114 came from State schools and 1,707 from de- 
nominational schools. In both cases, the percentage from 
the Christian colleges was above ninety. Of course most 
young men intending to be ministers enter the denomina- 
tional rather than the State schools. But this does not 
fully account for the supremacy of the denominational 



136 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

schools at this point. Very many young men are led to 
decide for the ministry under the encouraging environment 
usually to be found in the denominational college. Some 
denominational colleges have a wonderful record in this 
respect. In "The Future Leadership of the Church", Mr. 
Mott says that, during the first century of its history, Middle- 
bury College, Vermont, sent out 1,500 graduates, of whom 
more than 500 were ministers. A number of our Southern 
Baptist colleges have an excellent record in leading men to 
decide for the ministry. 

A largely unused opportunity. But, so far as the obser- 
vation of the writer has reached, their success has been more 
from the high Christian character of the professors and 
that of the more mature ministerial candidates in the student 
body, than from any conscious effort on the part of the in- 
stitutions to place the claims of the ministry on the students. 
As a class, college students are exceptionally keen for coun- 
sel as to their life-calling. The Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. 
secure most of their workers from among them. These 
institutions have gone about it methodically, while 
the average denominational college has apparently shrank 
from the responsibility of helping men to decide. Has the 
reader ever heard an address at a denominational college 
for men on the claims of the ministry as a vocation? The 
author has not, and he is of the opinion that few of them 
are made. And yet such addresses or sermons by mature 
visiting ministers or the president of the college would help 
many a boy, on whom God's Spirit is working, to decide for 
the ministry. 

How Broadus decided for the ministry. Dr. John A. 
Broadus, when only a lad and teaching a country school 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 137 

in Virginia, for three years asked himself whether he should 
be a minister. He thought he had decided against it, until, 
in August, 1846, God sent Dr. A. M. Poindexter to the 
Potomac Association, at Upperville, Virginia, and led him 
in his eloquent sermon to speak of the duty of young men 
to consecrate their mental talents and attainments to the 
work of the ministry. Unknown to the speaker, the truth 
sank deep into the heart of the young teacher who was in 
the throng. That same day Broadus hunted out this pastor 
and said: "Brother Grimsley, the question is decided; I 
must try to be a preacher." If this truth can win in a 
great gathering, a very small percent of which is facing the 
issue of selecting a calling, how much more so in the stu- 
dent body of a Christian college! An exceptional amount 
of attention to the Christian training of the students is 
given by the Mountain Mission Schools of the Home Mission 
Board. This training includes scholastic work, arranged to 
meet the actual needs, rather than to gain credit in certain 
standard-requirement institutions. Ought not every denomi- 
national institution to maintain such requirements as these 
mountain schools? But these schools also offer from the 
teachers help for the students in deciding their life-work. 
One result is that no system of schools in the country is 
sending out more preachers and religious workers. 

Great revivals lead men into the ministry. It has often 
been observed that religious revivals lead many to decide 
for the ministry. For a number of years the Evangelistic 
Department of the Baptist Home Mission Board has reported 
yearly more than a thousand young men and women who 
through the revivals conducted by the evangelists were led 
to dedicate their lives to the ministry and religious work. 



138 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Unfortunately the Superintendent of Evangelism has been 
too busy with preaching and many exacting duties to develop 
a follow-up system that would keep in touch with these 
young surrendered lives and by counsel and training confirm 
in them and lead to definite issues the decision the Holy 
Spirit produced. The author must assume the responsibility 
of saying that the oversight here is as deplorable as the lack 
of purposeful effort toward recruiting the ministry exhibited 
perhaps in most of our colleges, and indeed in all the organ- 
ized agencies of the denomination. Their pastors can be 
worth most to them, but a central agency could and should 
aid in bringing to maturity such precious fruit. Have we all 
been so busy playing the part of Martha, the energetic host- 
ess, that we could not have the quiet spiritual apprehension 
of Mary, who chose the better part? I make bold to say 
that our entire denomination needs to bring forth fruits 
meet for repentance at this point, beginning with those hon- 
ored educators who teach our young preachers in the Schools 
of the Prophets, and reaching all the way out to the local 
church and the home. Must we not ask our seminary presi- 
dents and the professors, whom the rich service will grace, 
to lead us in stirring up our great Baptist body on this neg- 
lected and vitally important matter? By the favor of God, 
revivals shall continue to be normal in Southern Baptist 
church practice. We may confidently look to them to pro- 
duce a spiritual atmosphere favorable to making pheachers. 
But we need to garner this rich fruit, seeking to help each 
convert to find his place and his life, instead of pursuing 
longer a haphazard attitude toward so great a matter as the 
supply of men who shall in the coming generation declare 
the Baptist message to the world. 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 139 

The kind of preachers needed. What kind of men are 
needed for the ministry to-day? The same kind are needed 
that has always been needed. It will be impossible in a 
paragraph to do more than offer a few suggestions. Of 
course, only soundly converted men are needed. Preferably 
they should be the product of sound doctrinal preaching. 
This is always important, and even more so in a day when 
many teachers and writers have their hearts set to play 
religious faith down to a weak sentimentalism. May God 
protect our pulpits from sentimental preachers, seeking to 
please men rather than God ! The preachers we need should 
be men who have come into the ministry on the call of 
God, and not to find a soft place. There is no soft place in 
the ministry, though weaklings can sometimes make a show 
of getting by. I would not by these words discourage timid 
and reticent youths from the ministry. Many of these are 
strong of heart, the very men God can surely use. But I 
would discourage, if I could, indolent men who drift into the 
ministry without any serious purpose to fit themselves for 
the greatest work a human being ever undertook. The 
gospel ministry never needed strong men more than it does 
at this time. The world has been following certain false 
gods. It has about discovered that they are made of clay. 
If only we shall have enough and big enough men in the 
pulpits, and in the highways and hedges as well, to catch 
them on the rebound, and win them back to faith in the one 
true God! Weaklings cannot do it. But men of aptness to 
teach and with hearts aflame with jealousy for the honor of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, can do it. If Southern Baptists had 
3,000 additional preachers of this kind, we could put them 
to work within the next few months, and we could use as 



140 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

many more within another year. Such men would not al- 
ways have to be inducted into a field; they would often, 
like the immortal Oberlin, make fields for themselves in 
places where no one else seems to want to go. It is a rather 
stern standard I am erecting, but not too much so. The 
preachers we need should be men who love peace, but not 
afraid of conflict. Christianity has always gone forward 
by conflict. Just now public sentiment has been sand-bagged 
into almost universal acquiescence to the proposition that 
nothing is so edifying in religion as universal peace and 
comity, peace also with the world. This dogma has even 
crept in among Baptists, but it savors not of the things of 
Christ. It is not the doctrine of Paul. It will never win a 
rebellious and sinful world to God. We need courageous 
preachers. We need in the ministry men who for Christ 
are willing, as Paul admonished Timothy, to endure hard- 
ness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. We need men who, 
believing they must give up the opportunity to win honors 
and prizes of this world, are glad to do so for the service 
of Christ. Baptists are not poor in such material. In a 
thousand country homes to-day, scattered throughout the 
South, and in a thousand school rooms, are Baptist lads who 
are ready to meet the requirements, if we shall find the way 
to counsel them and help them to know their own minds and 
the way to realize their hopes. 

Preachers and education. Baptists have always objected 
to set educational standards for the ministry. Many of the 
noblest spirits in our ministry are men without regular theo- 
logical training. Some of them are among our most prom- 
inent men. They merit the honor they receive. The 75-Mil- 
lion Campaign is bringing some laymen, now in midlife, into 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 141 

the ministry. Though they will be unable to take a regular 
theological education, this is well. More of them should be 
encouraged to follow. Having said so much, and heartily 
recognizing that a hard and fast educational standard is not 
desirable, I want to say that the time has come when we 
ought to insist that a young candidate for the ministry, 
among other things, shall declare his purpose to do all 
within his power to prepare himself educationally for the 
work. The general public is far better educated than it 
was even twenty years ago. It will be more and more so. 
The spiritual forces that the preacher must meet in the world 
are subtle and determined. It is almost prima facie evidence 
that a young candidate has not considered the responsibili- 
ties he would assume in the ministry, for him to propose him- 
self for ordination without the purpose to educate himself 
for the ministry. Formerly there was sometimes a prejudice 
against education in the churches, that made it possible for 
men to be ordained who were too lazy and shiftless to get 
an education. That prejudice is now about dead in most 
places. Those old deacons educated their sons and daugh- 
ters and these sons and daughters will not go to hear men 
pleach who know less than they do. Therefore the con- 
version of the deacons. Making all due allowance for un- 
usual cases, and recognizing that mere education cannot 
make a preacher, has not the time come for our ministers 
on ordaining councils to catechize young candidates with 
reference to their purpose to prepare themselves for the high 
calling they seek to enter, and make their ordination con- 
ditional on their purpose to do their best to educate them- 
selves? 

What is a call to the ministry? Any young man can get 



142 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

counsel from his pastor on what is a call to the ministry. I 
shall not seek here to define it. Rather, I shall give the 
story of how two distinguished ministers decided to become 
preachers. Their stories, and that of Dr. Broadus above, 
have impressed me profoundly. So would the experience of 
most ministers, only these stories so seldom get to the printed 
page. James Pettigrew Boyce was the son of a wealthy 
business man in Charleston, South Carolina. He had a 
sweet, godly mother. His father sent James to Brown Uni- 
versity. While there he was converted and decided to 
preach. His father did not want him to preach; a brilliant 
business career offered. But James wrote: "As to my pro- 
fession, I think I shall study for the ministry. That seems 
to me the only subject in which I think I could have any 
interest; it seems to me at times so glorious, and one so 
much needed by men, that I should love to proclaim it." We 
know not what struggles of soul he had. It seems that his 
love for religious work was born with his conversion, only a 
year or two before. The "Woe is me" of Paul, that is so 
often quoted in this connection, must be so interpreted as to 
make room for those who, like the great Boyce, gladly 
render their all to Christ and gladly hear His call to preach, 
without that tragedy between the will and the Holy Spirit 
which some have insisted on. Many may fight the call, but 
there are others who do not. 

William E. Hatcher and "Harvey". The mother of Dr. 
Harvey Hatcher and his more distinguished but hardly more 
charming brother William, was accustomed to putting her 
hands on the heads of her two little boys and praying that 
God should make them preachers. When William, the 
younger, was four, the mother died and they laid her body 



LABORERS FOR HIS HARVEST 143 

to rest out under the cherry tree near the Virginia country 
home. Both of her boys became preachers. There are tens 
of thousands who have cause to thank God for those two 
brothers and that dear praying mother. The day she passed 
away she prayed a last time that God should take her boys 
and make them ministers. In his charming Life of Dr. Wil- 
liam E. Hatcher, Dr. Eldridge B. Hatcher tells the story of 
his father's call to the ministry. Soon after the going of the 
mother, "Father Harris", pastor of the Mount Hermon 
church, to which the Hatchers belonged, one day in the 
home laid his hand on William's head and said: "My boy, I 
hope God will call you to preach the gospel." This and his 
mother's prayers stuck in the glowing mind of the lonely lad. 
A few years later, after he had been converted and was 
teaching a little school, it came back to him again with great 
force, as he sat one night in the old home out in Bedford 
County. Though the night was dismal and misty, iie put on 
his hat and went out into the darkness and pushed his way 
up to the top of a near-by hill, determined he would remain 
on the hill till the question was settled. There in the dark- 
ness the prayer of the dying mother was answered and the 
son went forth as a messenger of light to tens of thousands! 
He immediately set about preparing himself for the calling. 
What a man he became, that dreaming country boy who 
lost his mother when so young, but not too soon to leave her 
impress indelibly imprinted on his soul ! I think he was the 
greatest soul — he certainly had the greatest gift for im- 
parting himself charmingly to others, inspiring hope and 
cheer — whom I have ever been permitted to know in cordial 
friendship. His biography by his son admirably presents 
an intimate picture of this great soul. It ought to be read by 



144 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

every young Baptist in the South. Time and again as I 
have read it, tears have sprung into my eyes, to be chased 
away by smiles. I believe its reading would help many a 
boy to decide to give himself to the ministry of Christ. 

Offer your boys to God to preach. It is expected that this 
book shall be studied by many devout women who are moth- 
ers. It is also hoped not a few fathers may read or study it. 
I would put before both the question of offering their sons 
to God for the ministry. Can a devout mother picture to 
herself a more heart-gripping spectacle than that of the 
mother of the two little Virginia lads, beseeching God again 
in the last hours, with her hands on their heads, that He 
might make them ministers of the Cross of Christ? What 
would you prefer for your boy, for the allotted three score 
years and ten that may be his? The honors and prizes of 
the world, or the "Well done" of the Master and the love of 
souls he may bring to Christ and cheer along the way of life 
— which is better? I am sure that in your hearts thousands 
of you would rejoice if God should honor your boys by 
making them heralds of salvation. Every such mother and 
father should take this matter often to God in prayer. He 
has heard such prayers numberless times. He will not be 
deaf to yours. Seminaries, colleges, church revivals, ser- 
mons, conventions, personal counsel of ministers, the pray- 
ers of parents — these we must make the front line of our 
campaign against the reproach of a Christianity too enam- 
ored of the perishing prizes of the world to produce in our 
churches prophets of God, heralds of Christ. Gracious 
God, give to our Baptist people a holy passion to take from 
the churches the reproach of barrenness in producing men 
whom Thou mayest honor by calling them to be Thy spokes- 
men to the souls of the people! 



QUESTIONS OF CHAPTER VI. 

Give facts showing decline in the ministerial supply. 

What of the conditions in the South? 

Name some leading causes for the decline. 

Show that the preachers have not failed to render high service. 

Show how public opinion has discredited the ministry as a 

calling. 
Have Southern Baptists given serious attention to this matter? 

Have they prayed for more preachers. 
Give figures showing that many ordained men do not preach. 
Show that preachers are the children of prayer. 
Discuss home influence in relation to the preacher supply. 
Show why most of the preachers come from rural homes. 
Show how pastors and churches can bring young men to con- 
sider this calling. 
Show the value of local church mission work in this relation. 
Show the value of denominational colleges in this relation. 
What opportunity do many Christian colleges neglect? 
Describe how Dr. John A. Broadus decided to preach. Tell of 

the good work of Home Board mountain schools to encourage 

young men to become preachers. 
What can revivals do toward increasing the preacher supply? 
Has not the entire Baptist denomination fallen into grave neglect 

on this matter? 
Discuss the kind of preachers now needed. 
Can an indolent man, unwilling to study and work, expect to 

succeed as a minister ? 
Ought a neophyte, who is unwilling to do his best to prepare for 

the work, to be ordained? 
What influence is the present general education of the people 

having on the demand for educated preachers? 
Have Baptists enough trained preachers to supply the present 

demand? 
Tell how James P. Boyce entered the ministry. 
Tell how William E. Hatcher and Harvey Hatcher came to the 

sacred calling. 
Should parents offer their boys to God for this calling? 



CHAPTER VII. 
A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM. 

A great revival now needed. To-day I was on a street 
car, reading a fine book by Bishop Warren A. Candler, 
"Great Revivals and the Great Republic.'* At my side in 
the crowded car sat a man, who turned out to be a farmer, 
on his way home, twenty-five miles out from the city. "Ex- 
cuse me", he said, pointing to the book. "I have been 
thinking a lot about that. I see it says there that we should 
pray for and expect a great revival. Do you believe we 
shall have one?" It is a question thousands of God's peo- 
ple are asking. This is a favorable omen, and we should 
pray for their number to be greatly increased. "I 
think so", I replied. "But there is no time to give the 
reasons on which I base my belief before I must leave the 
car. Reports from scores of evangelists show that the peo- 
ple are hungry for the gospel, and that they are flocking 
to Christ, where and when the various crusts are broken 
that tend to shut them off." 

The "crusts" to be broken. "What do you mean by 
crusts?" queried my seat-mate. "I mean mainly", said I, 
"that church members are so busy with keeping up with 
the intense pace of material life, that they are not taking 
time to meditate and pray, as they once did. Ask them to 
do things, and they will. Ask them to give money, and 
they do. Which is well, but it does not directly feed the 
fires of love and worship in the heart, out of which come 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 147 

the issues of life. Do you see that automobile over there 
at the filling station? An automobile is about the last word 
in careering restlessness and activity, but even an auto- 
mobile must stop to have renewed the sources of its power. 
If it did not, a celebrated speed record would not prevent 
it from going dead somewhere out on the road. An auto- 
mobilist stranded in the mud on a remote road is a no more 
cheerless spectacle than a church taking comfort in its 
activities, but leaving off private and public devotion and 
neglecting to read and meditate on God's word. I think 
that is the biggest thing which stands between us and a 
great revival", I said. "But at the next stop I get out. 
Good-bye." "Good-bye", said my companion, as I brushed 
past him to get out. "I believe you are right. Even out 
in the country everybody has the fidgets these days, no 
time to think. Maybe God will make us think and bring 
us to our knees." To which under my breath I uttered a 
fervent, Amen! as I made my way to the door. 

The New Testament type of religion. The 1 906 meeting 
of the Southern Baptist Convention will always be memo- 
rable because of the instruction it gave its Home Mission 
Board to establish a Department of Evangelism. On that 
occasion Dr. B. H. Carroll delivered a great address, in 
which he showed that evangelism was required by the New 
Testament teaching and was practiced by the early dis- 
ciples. From the fourth chapter of Ephesians he showed 
that pastors, evangelists and teachers were permanently to 
minister to the needs of the churches. He showed, through 
the case of Philip the evangelist, that evangelists may 
properly go to unreached masses, as well as to churches. By 
the case of Timothy, whom Paul instructed to do the work 



148 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

of an evangelist, he demonstrated that soul-winning was 
not the entire duty of the evangelist. He is to preach the 
Word, reprove, rebuke, exhort. He had Timothy tarry at 
Ephesus, "that thou mightest charge certain men not to 
teach a different doctrine." Dr. Carroll declared that all 
the brilliant young preachers who constituted the staff of 
Paul were evangelists, and that the office of evangelist in 
the New Testament was of more importance than that of 
pastor. He profoundly moved the great body that heard 
him and it immediately provided for the establishment of 
the Department of Evangelism. 

The American method. The practice of evangelistic 
preaching went into eclipse when Romanism got a strangle 
hold on religion. Sacramentalism and ceremonialism dis- 
placed the simplicity of faith; ordinances and obedience to 
the pope superceded the practice of bringing the souls of 
people to do business directly with God. The Reformation 
released forces which looked toward the return of revi- 
valism, but put them in a straight jacket by maintaining the 
State church and attributing mystical virtue to certain 
ordinances. In England, the Puritans and the Wesleys 
struggled back toward the New Testament emphasis on 
evangelism and vital piety. But the revivals of the New 
Testament never reached again a field for free action until 
the founding of America. In all other lands civil or ec- 
clesiastical powers fought against it. For the first time 
since New Testament days, it got an opportunity in America, 
unhindered by any powers, except those which lie in the 
natural heart of unregenerate men. The religious life of 
America has hitherto advanced largely through great re- 
vivals. The Great Awakening following 1834, in which 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 149 

Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield played so large a 
part; the Great Revival of 1800, in which God smote 
French infidelity, which was bringing canker to the soul of 
the young nation; the Revival of 1858, in which He was 
strengthening the heart of the nation to endure the deep 
trials of war without despair; the Moody and Sankey Re- 
vival, beginning in England in 1873, and winning back to 
America through meetings that blessed tens of thousands in 
America's largest cities — these are outstanding American 
revivals, all of which, except the last, swept over the entire 
country. Because of the growth of the nation and perhaps 
other reasons, the revivals of Moody and Sankey, though 
their influence was far-reaching, never spread into nation- 
wide proportions. 

It saves the people. For many years revivalism has been 
the characteristic method of soul-winning and religious 
growth throughout our country. It is still the means by 
which most souls are brought to Christ. But the simplicity 
and emotional fervor which accompany it and are some- 
thing of its essence are not acceptable to the dignities and 
powers of this world. Unsanctified education and ration- 
alism, along with the spirit of places where the honors and 
dignities of the world fill the eye and set the fashion, find 
in themselves no heart to commend the revivalistic pattern 
of religion. It seeks to bring sinners to a decision for Christ, 
and souls cannot always be led through so great a spiritual 
crisis by the use of such coolly decorous methods as com- 
mend themselves to the classes I have named. The com- 
mon people heard Jesus gladly. They also hear gladly 
the proclamation of the gospel by a true evangelistic 
preacher, but not even the Son of God in His quest for 



150 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

souls won the favor of the Scribes and the Pharisees. Mr. 
William T. Stead, English writer, said of revivalism: "The 
systematized revival, the deliberate organization of religious 
services for the express purpose of rousing the latent moral 
enthusiasm of mankind, is a distinctly American product. 
Revivalism flourished in the United States long before it 
was acclimated on this side of the water. It is easy to 
sneer at revivalism, but it has been the means by which 
hundreds and thousands of men and women have found 
their way to a higher and purer life. It has done things 
which the more cultured and refined would not even have 
ventured to attempt." The nation-wide revivals have in 
the total effect meant less to this country than the local 
revivals conducted in the churches throughout the country. 
The denominations which have won and are winning the 
largest membership in America are those that have with 
frequent regularity conducted special evangelistic services 
in the churches. 

Official ignorance of evangelism. I have partly described 
how America is the child of evangelical faith and that its 
successes have been mainly through evangelism. But the 
powers that be in America do not seem to be conversant with 
that fact. This is their misfortune and the misfortune of the 
country. The Christian bodies that have made America 
great are those bodies that have interpreted their mission to 
be spiritual and evangelistic rather than political and sacra- 
mental. These bodies have preached a divine Christ to lost 
souls. They have furnished the spiritual dynamic for right- 
eous statesmanship and have held up their rulers before God 
in prayer. They were the power behind the securing of 
separation of Church and State, and have tried to live up to 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 151 

their God-given conviction that Christianity serves the State 
best when it makes good men and leaves them to make good 
civil institutions, and that the State serves Christianity best 
when it lets it alone, except to secure fair play and a fair 
opportunity for all religious beliefs. But this is contrary to 
the Roman Catholic teaching. The Church, according to 
them, may and should make requirements of the State in its 
favor. But they mean only their own organization, since 
the other Christian bodies are in their view outlaw sects. 
Certain inter-denominational organizations of various Pro- 
testant bodies have also played down the principle of the sep- 
aration of Church and State. Sometimes they have done 
this to checkmate the Catholics, but more often because a 
lessening grip on the hidden spiritual resources of Christian- 
ity has sent them scurrying to the old and often-discredited 
prop of what Romanists call the "secular arm". 

Baptists were astounded. Many Baptists were astounded 
at some things bearing on religious rights that emerged in 
recent years under the pressure of war. Not only were 
there indications of Roman Catholic and Y. M. C. A. influ- 
ences against the interests of religious freedom and unhin- 
dered evangelicism, but there were prominent religious lead- 
ers of other bodies who seemed to think that evangelical 
faith did not need a free hand. The Federal Council of 
Churches could seldom seem to find unanimity of conviction 
on this, but many of its prominent elements were willing for 
free preaching in the armies to be brought to such low 
levels as the Y. M. C. A. might elect to encourage. And 
that in America! The Baptists, Methodists, and Presby- 
terians alone represent in their adherents 48,000,000 of the 
American population and approximately half the soldiers 



152 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

in the armies, but their views, together with those of othei 
smaller evangelical groups, received such a lack of intelli- 
gent appreciation by the officials of the government, that 
one can only conclude that the rulers of this country, which 
is the child of evangelical faith and its revivals, actually do 
not know what the American religious spirit is, nor that their 
only function concerning it is to provide without favor for 
its free exercise. 

Evangelism made difficult in the World War. Since the 
American religious spirit of evangelism cannot thrive in the 
atmosphere of a government which is ignorant of its nature 
and which is also unmindful that the Constitution forbids 
official intermeddling for or against religious views, it seems 
desirable here to set down a prominent instance of such 
governmental encroachment on free religion. In the Amer- 
ican armies training for the great World War, Baptists and 
other evangelicals had the greatest difficulty in securing the 
simple privilege of ministering by gospel preaching to the 
boys whose ancestors under Washington won this Republic 
and who are the great stabilizing influence that preserves this 
nation to-day. Welfare work was provided for through the 
Y. M. C. A. and other agencies. To the "Y" was added 
a certain religious managerial function, which was thought 
by government officials, among whose advisers no responsi- 
ble representative of any evangelical body was called, to be 
all the evangelicals needed or could ask for. The Roman 
Catholics, with crosses, altars, and saving sacraments, were 
allowed unhindered opportunity. So were the Jews, who 
reject Christ. But the great American evangelical bodies 
which sought to carry the free gospel of Christ to their own 
lads were crowded together and put under a leadership 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 153 

without their own choice or consent, which was welfare and 
amusement agent and sutler to the army, and also carried the 
direction of religion for all the great evangelical bodies, 
playing it down to a low level of spiritual earnestness which 
was unsatisfactory to every evangelical group. 

Dr. Gray's great sendee. Not only Baptists but all friends 
of evangelical religion are under lasting obligation to Dr. 
B. D. Gray, Corresponding Secretary of the Home Mission 
Board, for his able, devoted and untiring efforts with the 
authorities at Washington, in which he sought to impress 
upon them that religion is free in America and that the faith 
of the great evangelical bodies of this country is a religion 
of the free preaching of Jesus Christ. Dr. Gray called to 
his aid Dr. J. B. Gambrell, President of the Southern Baptist 
Convention, and also Northern Baptist leaders. Also asso- 
ciated with him and indefatigable and invaluable was Dr. 
George Green, the Home Mission Board's Director of Camp 
Activities. These gentlemen made a courteous, but solemn 
and vigorous protest against the measures that were making 
it impossible for the ministers of evangelical bodies to have 
free access to their boys with the gospel. That protest was 
the chief force which won substantial modifications to cer- 
tain orders the direct enforcement of which would largely 
have destroyed the evangelistic preaching in the armies and 
left the approach of evangelical ministers to be measured 
out homeopathically by the uncertain hands of an organiza- 
tion that has too often played evangelical preaching down to 
its lowest expression, and in the war mixed it with movies 
and the vending of cigarettes and chocolate. No assertion 
is made here concerning the means by which government 
officials were led to take a position which is in effect subver- 



154 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

sive of the American principle of religious liberty. But at- 
tention is called that, if the now discredited sponsors for 
Church Union and the representatives of rationalism and 
social reform had had charge of the plans for the religious 
approach in the American armies, they could hardly have 
outlined measures that would work more directly into their 
hands than did the unfortunate system which was adopted. 
Some of the strongest and best preachers of Baptists and 
of other denominations preached to the men under the sys- 
tem as carried out, but this did not change the general ten- 
dency of the system to make free and evangelistic preaching 
difficult, nor did it lessen the magnitude of the error of the 
government's representatives in not trying to find out from 
the religious bodies of America what they wanted, through 
men who had the right to speak for them. 

The Baptist type of religion. In saying that revivalism 
is distinctly the Baptist method, I do not claim it for Baptists 
exclusively. The Methodists have always shared equally 
with Baptists the passion for evangelism, and in recent years 
Presbyterians are coming to magnify special revivals for 
soul-winning and church growth. In his book, "The Task 
that Challenges", Dr. S. L. Morris, Secretary of the South- 
ern Presbyterian Home Mission Board, writes: "The world 
will never be saved by any other means than evangelism, 
the preaching of the gospel of the crucified Christ — esteemed 
the 'foolishness of preaching' by this present world, whether 
of the Greek philosophers of Paul's day, or of modern ra- 
tionalists." Methodists and Presbyterians share with Bap- 
tists the responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the over- 
whelming majority of the people in the South and South- 
west. Baptists rejoice when they think that they have in 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 155 

these two great bodies devoted co-workers for bringing the 
38,000,000 people in this section to the Cross of Christ. It 
is with no spirit of fault-finding, but of concern and sym- 
pathy, that we declare that revivalism in the North and 
Northwest has no similar place. Dr. W. W. Hamilton found 
that the superintendent of evangelism of a Northern body 
was giving much of his time to meetings for pastors, in 
which his main purpose was to convince the pastors that 
evangelism was scriptural. Think of the plight of Southern 
Baptists, if an expert had to be employed to convince our 
pastors that revivals are scriptural! I have just finished 
reading a work on evangelism by a Northern evangelist. It 
is from the press of a noted publisher. Really I cannot 
make out whether it is for the unconverted, or whether it is 
intended as an apologetic, or to show men how to win souls. 
Apparently the author has suffered at the same point here 
at which many Northern writers seem to suffer. He often 
speaks of bringing men to Christ, but never once utters an 
expression that clearly means that men are lost without the 
atoning merits of His death. Can it be that the deadly rep- 
tile of rationalism has even fastened its fangs into the men 
who go out to bring men to Christ, so that its virus is des- 
troying their faith? Certainly, while Northern theological 
seminaries send out graduates who have accepted as true 
the teachings of rationalistic professors, the spirit of revival- 
ism may not be expected to thrive in that section. No more 
would it under similar conditions in the South. 

Basis of Baptist growth. In a recent private conversation, 
a prominent Episcopal minister expressed to Dr. Charles W. 
Daniel, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, of Atlanta, his 
inability to account for the rapid growth of Baptists in 



156 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

America. "I have often sought for an authoritative utter- 
ance on the subject, but have not found it," declared the 
Episcopal minister. "My people were here first, but now 
Baptists outnumber Episcopalians almost seven to one." Dr. 
Daniel enlightened him, but was too courteous to reply to 
the gentlemen concerning certain recollections which Bap- 
tists have of the time when the Episcopalians were stronger 
and were the Established Church, and how the Establish- 
ment's representatives in Virginia had Baptist preachers 
haled before the courts and imprisoned for preaching the 
gospel. But that episode illustrates well probably the great- 
est reason why Baptists now so largely out-number the Epis- 
copalians. It snows the Episcopalians looking down upon 
those who carried the gospel to the common people and to 
the very wilderness, and the Baptists filled with a holy pas- 
sion to bring all men to Jesus Christ through the gospel. 
Baptists and Methodists outnumber all other Christian 
bodies in America to-day mainly because more than any 
others they went to men because of their need rather than 
because of their influence or fitness for the canons of high 
ecclesiastical respectability. Now they have many thousands 
of wealthy, cultivated and influential adherents, and, so far, 
are in danger from the same source of barrenness which 
afflicts some other imposing religious bodies. Other impor- 
tant causes have contributed to Baptist growth, but their 
development need not be undertaken here. The Baptists of 
the South have won more than four-fifths of their converts 
through revival meetings, by far the larger portion of them 
out in country churches, where the pastor usually had a fel- 
low-pastor as his aid. Our Baptist passion for revivalism 
also largely accounts for the most of the Negroes having 
been won to the Baptist faith. 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 157 

Baptists steadfast for evangelism. Baptists of the South 
are committed with their whole hearts to evangelism. This 
committal is implicitly contained in all evangelical faith, but 
there are some bodies which have measurably side-stepped 
the soul-winning implications of their faith. Some have al- 
lowed the educational emphasis to interfere with a whole- 
hearted revivalism, and have largely ignored the command 
to go into the highways and hedges with the good news, 
while at the same time they have cultivated the intellectual 
among their own people at the expense of the emotional and 
spiritual. Some have given to certain ordinances a spiritual 
significance which tends to take from the holding up of the 
Cross before men its centrality and unique power. But Bap- 
tists until this hour have with a holy and jealous passion 
magnified revivalism and evangelism. While the large city 
church tends in all denominations to become the entering 
wedge for a merely cultural and aesthetic presentation of 
Scripture truth, Southern Baptists have probably suffered less 
even here than any other large Christian body. A large pro- 
portion of our most prominent city pulpits have in them pas- 
tors who are evangelistic to the core. Not a few of these men, 
in addition to their regular fervent preaching of an evangel- 
istic gospel, go out on the streets of their cities and preach 
to the passing throngs. They also use every opportunity to 
conduct revival meetings in other cities and out in the coun- 
try. At the same time, there seems to be no token of a waning 
of the revival spirit in our country churches. The historic 
protracted meeting season is happily and effectively still in 
use, in which the pastor usually has a neighboring pastor 
or an evangelist to preach for him. The Enlistment Workers 
of the Home Mission Board have a specific cultural service 



158 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

to foster in the churches, but they often find that the best 
way to accomplish their purpose is to lead up to it through 
a revival, and not seldom they bring new converts into the 
churches. 

Organized effort. The organized evangelistic efforts, con- 
ducted by District Associations, State Mission Boards, and 
the Home Mission Board, are a token of the holy passion of 
Baptists for soul-winning. Baptists have usually scrutinized 
propositions for new organized activities with more jealousy 
than other religious groups. Their instinct leads them in a 
case of doubt to favor less rather than more organization 
machinery. In the long run, this will always be true of 
Baptists, because it has to do with the fundamental prin- 
ciples of liberty and initiative. Notwithstanding this, Bap- 
tists have unhesitatingly used their co-operative machinery 
to establish and further evangelistic preaching. In this 
field of co-operative effort they have been pioneers. Most 
of the various State Mission Boards, for at least part of 
the time, send out evangelists, and the entire Southern body 
through the Home Mission Board's Department of Evangel- 
ism puts itself heartily and even passionately behind a great 
group of denominational soul-winners. Our theological 
seminaries magnify evangelism before their students and one 
of them maintains a group of evangelists under its own 
direction who annually bring hundreds of souls into the 
Kingdom. 

Independent Baptist evangelism. "Independent evangel- 
ism" used to be in uncertain repute in the South. It is still 
so in certain sections of the country. The bad odor into 
which it had come may be surmised from the following 
words by Dr. E. Y. Mullins, written by him in 1909 in the 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 159 

Introduction to the book edited by Dr. W. W. Hamilton on 
"Sane Evangelism". Dr. Mullins declared: "There are 
churches which have been swept by a kind of evangelism 
which has left them twice dead, plucked up by the roots. It 
appeals solely to the emotions, relies upon clap-trap and ma- 
chinery, in a superficial manner skims over the surface, and 
leaves a bad condition in its wake." Of a type of evangelist 
then unhappily much in evidence, he said: "The man who 
relies upon his evangelism for a reputation, or who is in the 
business for the money he can make out of it, or who seeks 
simply to gratify his ambition, has brought untold injury to 
the cause of Christ." Dr. Mullins also deplored the tendency 
of even the better class of evangelists to fall before the 
temptation to secure great numbers to count, whether or not 
they are soundly converted. This evil still abides, and not 
even denominational evangelists are entirely free from it. 
However, the rest of us should be slow to criticize them until 
in this connection we shall quit putting our best foot forward, 
its encasing shoe carefully polished for inspection. Estimat- 
ing success in spiritual work by materialistic standards is a 
snare from which many are in danger. It has only been thir- 
teen years since Home Mission Board Evangelism was 
inaugurated. At that time the unhappy conditions mentioned 
by President Mullins could be found in almost any section of 
the South, among other denominations as well as Baptists. 
But a pronounced improvement has followed the safeguards 
with which Baptists have surrounded revivalism. One seldom 
ever hears now of the "wild-cat" revivalists, who formely of- 
ten took a community by storm for a few weeks, creating 
great excitement, counting many conversions, and then dis- 
appearing, perhaps into unknown parts, leaving the churches 



160 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

to find and soundly convert many of the "converts", and to 
overcome the reaction from the unwholesome excitement. 
The independent evangelist has not disappeared, but the 
work has now drawn into it some of the ablest and most con- 
structive ministers we have. Good examples of this are Drs. 
T. T. Martin and J. H. Dew, the latter turning to the indepen- 
dent service after years as the Missouri State Evangelist, the 
former gathering around him a group of twenty-five or more 
men of character and sound doctrinal training, who devote 
their entire time to evangelistic work. Thus denominational 
evangelism has helped to bring larger possibilities of useful- 
ness to the work of independent evangelists, and has tended 
to create a demand for such sound teachers of New Testa- 
ment doctrine in the field of independent evangelism as Drs. 
Dew and Martin, instead of the men who in union evangelis- 
tic meetings formerly belittled and played down the denomi- 
national convictions of the people. 

Denominational evangelism. The value is obvious of an 
organization to gather up and conserve the results of evan- 
gelistic effort. Dr. B. H. Carroll makes the point that New 
Testament evangelists were responsible to the churches. 
This is substantially true of our independent evangelists to- 
day, who recognize their moral responsibility to the denomi- 
nation to which they belong and are themselves members of 
a church in the body they serve. This is true in an addi- 
tional sense of evangelists who labor under the direction of 
a State or general agency, itself subject to the direction 
and revision of the denominational body. Denominational 
evangelism gives a place and emphasis to evangelism which 
it abundantly merits and which it would not otherwise re- 
ceive. It also safeguards the doctrinal or teaching content 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 161 

of the message of the evangelist. It is not intended to sug- 
gest that the independent evangelists who now serve Bap- 
tists are not safe doctrinal teachers. Nor is it suggested that 
evangelists who are employed by the denomination are there- 
by lifted above the possibility of teaching error. But it is 
true that the errors that might creep into the teaching of 
evangelists employed by the denomination are naturally 
and readily subject to correction. The Home Mission Board 
evangelists have a unique record in this respect. Nearly 300 
men have been employed, at one time or another, in Home 
Board evangelistic service, but until the present, no formal 
complaint has ever come to the Board concerning the doc- 
trinal content of the teaching of one of these brethren. 

Doctrinal and sound. Sound doctrine is a phrase that 
does not charm the ears of some people in these latter days. 
Reference has elsewhere been made to subtle and keen in- 
fluences which have made it their business to discredit 
the teaching of Christian doctrine. But the people of God 
will not therefore forsake their emphasis on doctrinal teach- 
ing. Salvation is through the person of Christ and not 
through the doctrines related to Him. But the person of 
Christ is able to save only as He is indeed the Son of God, 
able to bear the sins of many, and these are doctrinal teach- 
ings. To sneer at doctrine is to sneer at the deity of Christ, 
and the chief opposers of Christian doctrine will be found 
among those who reject His deity. Their antipathy to doc- 
trine has a certain consistency, though they hold on to their 
own theories of rationalism with great obstinacy. Bishop 
Candler in "Great Revivals and the Great Republic", says: 
"The next great revival will be doctrinal in character, as all 
great awakenings have been and must be. The Holy Spirit 



162 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

has no instrument with which to regenerate human souls but 
inspired truth." Principal P. T. Forsyth is quoted as saying 
that the ancient prophet responded to the summons of God 
with the ready answer, "Here am I ! " but that some of our 
modern prophets speak out of confusion and despair, and 
ask, "Where am I?" A hesitant, doubting faith will never 
produce a revival. Rationalism can starve the faith of many 
by its philosophical negations, but it never has produced a 
single revival and never will produce one. Not all the wis- 
dom of its seers combined, in all their lives and with all the 
world for a field, can produce an effect on the characters 
of men comparable to that often produced by a Spurgeon 
or a Moody or a Whitefield through a single discourse. Bap- 
tist churches should insist that the great doctrines shall be 
preached in their revivals. Our evangelistic passion is great 
and sincere, but there are indications that not a few new 
members have been brought into our churches under the 
preaching of evangelists in whom the emotional appeal and 
pressure for decision has thrived at the expense of a setting 
forth of the great doctrines of grace. The records show 
that our churches are losing by exclusion and otherwise 
more than one out of every three we baptize, and superfi- 
ciality in not a little evangelistic preaching is rightly being 
held accountable for it. 

The Home Board Evangelists. Denominational evangel- 
ism, as developed by the Home Mission Board, has proven 
itself adaptable to all the varying needs of city and country 
and factory and street, of great co-operative campaigns and 
of services conducted independently in far-separated places. 
The fifty evangelists and singers, directed by Dr. W. W. 
Hamilton, the Home Mission Board's Superintendent of 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 163 

Evangelism, are constantly working and moving throughout 
the South. These activities are conducted with freedom and 
elasticity, and yet with precision. For three weeks the en- 
tire group is often gathered into a single mass attack on the 
strongholds of sin in some city. For the pulpits whose re- 
quirements are most exacting, and equally for the smallest 
church and the weakest mission, the Superintendent fur- 
nishes a man from his staff suited to each place. He has in 
the personnel of his staff great preachers, popular preachers, 
street, theatre and factory preachers, preachers for the col- 
ored churches, trained evangelistic song leaders, doctrinal 
teachers. He has some men who are equally adapted in all 
these places. As new needs emerge, evangelists are secured 
with gifts to meet them. One shall put to flight a thousand 
and two shall chase ten thousand. The combined spiritual 
impact of this great group of evangelists and soul-winners 
on a city has proven a joy and a blessing to the Baptists and 
the admiration of and cause for congratulation from other 
evangelical ministers. These city campaigns sometimes 
bring as many as 2,000 converts into the churches, and they 
never fail to fill the churches with renewed spiritual power 
and a fine sense of denominational fellowship. Ten days 
after the close of one of these campaigns often finds the 
workers who participated in it scattered throughout almost 
every State in the South, conducting unrelated meetings in 
thirty towns, country churches or cities. Space limitations 
do not allow a setting forth of the various elements of 
strength which the denominational support behind this De- 
partment of Evangelism has enabled it to develop. To men- 
tion only one conspicuous example: Every great revival has 
always been characterized by a great singing of Christian 



164 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

hymns. In America it was so when they met by tens oi 
thousands in the camp meetings in the forests in 1 800. When 
Moody preached and multitudes were brought to Christ, 
Sankey as truly sang them to Christ. It has always been so 
and it will remain so. By constant observation, the Home 
Board Superintendent of Evangelism has been able to sense 
this high value of gospel singing in the quest for souls, and 
has made effective his knowledge by the employment of fif- 
teen trained singing evangelists, most of whom are also 
gifted personal workers. Their work has added much to the 
effectiveness of the service and has created a demand for 
singing evangelists which the Home Mission Board and 
other agencies have not until now been able to supply. 

The success of denominational evangelism. Denomina- 
tional evangelism is a proven success. The workers of the 
various State Mission Boards regularly reap rich harvests. 
The same is true of the independent Baptist evangelists, the 
personnel of which group among Southern Baptists is now 
exceptionally strong. The Home Mission Board group is 
far and away the greatest group of denominational evangel- 
ists in America. Not even Methodists, who have a happy 
genius and passion for evangelism, seem to be able to match 
Baptists in denominational evangelism, at least they have 
not done so. For the last several years the evangelists of 
the Home Mission Board have brought to baptism more 
than twenty percent of as many converts as have come into 
Southern Baptist churches. Of course they are just extra 
harvest hands come to help the pastor garner in the grain 
he and his church have been cultivating all the while. Still 
it is a unique and signal record of soul-winning which the 
denominational evangelism of Southern Baptists is making 
for them. 



A PERENNIAL EVANGELISM 165 

A solvent of many ills. A Christ-honoring evangelism is a 
solvent for many ills and denominational evangelism is its 
most promising expression. The term is here intended to 
include the protracted meetings and revivals conducted by 
pastors, with neighboring pastors to aid. Though less ex- 
ploited than the other methods, in the aggregate this has 
meant and should always mean more to Baptists than all 
other methods. It must always be kept in the place of 
primacy. We also include independent evangelists, who 
labor in the denomination and show themselves to possess a 
sense of moral accountability to it, as well as all evangelists 
employed by the agencies of the denomination. This evan- 
gelism is a solvent for many ills which afflict society. Its 
one unchanging point of attack is on the heart and life of 
the individual. It is able to win the victory here, because 
it has a gospel that can cure men from the dominance of 
sin. 

Cores class hate and radicalism. It is the solvent for class 
hate and the wars of capital and labor. American Chris- 
tians do much better in their private morals than in their 
sense of public honesty. But this does not change the fact 
that the basal thing is better men, and that the unique busi- 
ness of the churches, which not all the sophistries of social- 
ism and rationalism or of Satan himself must be allowed to 
check, is to make better men by bringing them to Christ. 
Sydney Smith sneeringly said of early English Methodists, 
"All mines and subterranean places belong to them", and it 
is well that it was so, or soon there would have been nothing 
above ground for anybody else to care for. Nothing can do 
so much to compose the troubles and class divisions which 
afflict America to-day as a great revival of religion. Social- 



166 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

ism expects salvation by whitewashing the outside, but it 
will come only by cleansing the inside. Socialism would have 
equality by forcing the man who has to give to him who has 
not, but the Christ we preach brings it by leading him who 
has to share with him who has not. The one leads to 
anarchy, the other to liberty and democracy. Instead of 
evangelistic faith softening its demands to conform to the 
"cool conviction" of socialistic prophets of Utopia, the urge 
of the present unrest and unwholesome class consciousness 
should bring the Christian people of America to their knees 
in importunate prayer to God for His Spirit and for such 
a revival of religion as shall shake this nation from shore to 
shore. 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VII. 

Do you think there are now tokens that a general religious 

revival will come? 
What "crusts" must be broken before such a revival can come? 
Is revivalism the New Testament type of religion? Quote Dr. 

B. H. Carroll on this. 
What part has Christian revivalism played in America? 
Show how revivalism has brought most American Christians to 

Christ. Quote Mr. W. T. Stead on this. 
What forces in America are ignorant of evangelical practice 

and principle? 
Discuss the action of the Government concerning religion in the 

World War. 
Tell of Dr. B. D. Gray's great service to evangelical faith, in 

that connection. 
Give facts that show Southern Baptist devotion to evangelism. 
Show the relation between revivals and denominational growth. 
Tell of the attitude of many of our prominent city pastors. 
What has happened to independent evangelism, in connection 

with denominational evangelism? 
Describe the organized work of evangelism by the Home Board. 
Why should evangelists preach the doctrines? 
Show how Home Board evangelism is adapted to all situations. 
Tell of the value of the Evangelistic Singers. 
Tell of the large success of Home Board evangelism. i 

Show how evangelism solves many social problems. 
What of its value as a cure for radicalism? 



CHAPTER VIII. 
EDUCATION AND RELIGION. 

America's great faith in education. The American faith 
in public education is almost boundless. We have felt that 
it was essential to the perpetuity of free institutions. Many 
writers have felt themselves estopped by our separation of 
Church and State from magnifying the still greater necessity 
of Christian education. Still others have ignored the edu- 
cational value of religious faith because they wanted to do 
so. The result has been pathetic. More faith has been placed 
in a merely intellectual education than it deserves, consider- 
able as it is. And less emphasis has been given to the reli- 
gious element in education than was fit. A mere ability of 
people to read a little and write a little is a pitifully small 
thing on which to base confidence that they are fit for 
responsible citizenship. The examinations conducted by the 
military authorities during the war showed that near-illiter- 
acy is larger than its crass illiteracy. But not even the war 
examinations searched to the bottom of our trouble. There 
is such a thing as moral illiteracy, and not all the State 
educational powers in America, with all their millions and 
prestige, have an effective machinery for surveying it, still 
less curing it. It is a responsibility of American Christianity, 
one the full weight of which American Christian bodies have 
not yet realized. 

Education without religion fails. Dr. Harvey Hatcher and 
I were driving a mule to the train from the district associa- 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 169 

tion, out in the country. Our discourse was on some of the 
speeches for Christian education made at the meeting. "My 
brother", said he, "had it ever occurred to you that to edu- 
cate a man without making him a Christian is only to make 
him more powerful to do evil?" It had not occurred to me. 
I had always had that naive confidence in the essential good- 
ness of education which publicists and speakers inculcated. 
One of the first recollections of my childhood had been of a 
fond grandmother who applauded my performance as I de- 
voted my childish attention to reading what was in some 
book. To the grandmother's partiality my precocious appli- 
cation to the printed page betokened future distinction and 
worth. Dr. Hatcher challenged a lifelong belief. But as our 
nimble-footed mule picked his way daintily along the gullied 
road toward the railway station, I pondered the words of my 
honored friend. Many times since I have recalled them. 
They awakened me from the spell of a misplaced confidence. 
He saw clearly what more people are now beginning to see, 
that education without Christian conviction in America has 
failed to achieve the salutary results that could be wished. 
Froude, the scholar and educational authority, seeing that 
education which merely sharpens the mind is worse than use- 
less, said: "When all are selfish, the sage is no better than 
the fool, and only rather more dangerous." Balzac, in the 
"Human Comedy", declared: "Education by religious bodies 
is the grand principle of life for the nations. Christianity 
created the modern nationalities and it will preserve them." 
Balzac had no confidence that education without religion 
would make people good. Neither does the inspired word 
of God, which declares, "The world by wisdom knew noj 
God." Commenting on this Scripture, a recent authority 



170 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

declares that, "The truth Paul proclaimed should 
be laid to heart by the advocates of godless education in 
our day. Education without religion leads to atheism, and 
atheism leads to anarchy." 

Some oppose all general education. Some savants, seeing 
the futility of an education which deals only with the body 
and intellect, and not knowing anything about the possibili- 
ties of education of the spiritual nature of man, have advo- 
cated taking education away from the masses. Emperor 
William of Germany is quoted as having said that there was 
too much education among the Germans. The world now 
agrees with him that there was too much — of the sort. Pro- 
fessor Harry Thurston Peck, of Columbia University, depre- 
ciated the idea, "that education in itself and for all human 
beings is a good and desirable possession." He declared: 
"Education means ambition, and ambition means discon- 
tent. We see masses of men dissatisfied with their lot, their 
brains addled and confused by doctrine that is only half the 
truth and vaguely understood, yet thoroughly adapted to 
make them ripe for the work of the agitator and the enemy 
of public order. Such an education only makes the criminal 
person far more dangerous." "The Kaiser and the scholar 
agree that education, to be safe and useful, must be con- 
fined to a limited number, and ignorance must rest on the 
masses," aptly remarks Bishop Candler, who further calls at- 
tention that their attitude toward educating the people tal- 
lies with that of the Romanists concerning the Bible, in their 
refusal to trust it in the hands of the common people. But 
the views of Rome, both in education and religion, are out 
of date. Even if education is as dangerous as Professor 
Peck declared, there is no hope that the American people 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 171 

will ever allow the door of opportunity to learn and know 
shut in their faces. One of the reactions following the 
World War, has been the overflowing of the halls of our 
educational institutions with students. 

Too much of the kind. But just as surely as the fall of 
Germany through the World War was brought about by an 
educational system which shut out God, so surely may we 
have too much education in America, if it turns its back on 
God, and confines its efforts to the intellect rather than the 
will and emotions. A man or a nation may have too much 
education by having the wrong kind of education. Sii 
Archibald Alison in his "History of Europe During the French 
Revolution", noting the increase of depravity with the spread 
of knowledge in France, said: "It is not simply knowledge, 
it is knowledge detached from religion, that produces this 
fatal result. The reason of its corrupting influence in morals 
is evident. When so detached it multiplies the passions and 
desires of the heart without an increase of its regulating 
principles, it augments the attacking forces without 
strengthing the resisting powers, and thence the disorder and 
license it spreads throughout society. The invariable char- 
acteristic of a declining and corrupt state of society is a 
progressive increase in the force of passion and a progres- 
sive decline in the influence of duty." There has been and 
now is in the United States too much education of the sort 
which "multiplies the desires and passions of the heart with- 
out an increase to its regulating principles". Such educa- 
tion augments the forces which attack virtue, roll in greed, 
sneer at religious restraints, and try to rule God out of His 
world. There is much more of this education now than 
ever in our past. What can the patriotic citizen do less than 



172 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

sense in it the omen of a "declining and corrupt state of 
society?** When heard we so much as now of rights and so 
little of duties? When did more people seek happiness in 
things and fewer from inner spiritual resources? When was 
personal liberty more vociferously asserted and the idea of 
sacrifice more generally shunned and less practiced? But 
the cure for a bad education is not ignorance. The antidote 
is right education. The remedy is not less knowledge, but 
nobler knowledge, and an education which deals with the 
springs of human action, as well as the compass of the intel- 
lect. The cure for that education which is "ever learning 
and never able to come to the knowledge of truth", is an 
education which includes proportionately the spiritual part 
of man's nature as well as his intellect. America can never 
have too much of this kind of education. 

State education neutral on religion. The separation of 
Church and State in America is generally believed to require 
the State schools to give no instruction about religion. It 
requires that they shall be neutral on religious matters, ex- 
cept to treat with respect man's effort to know God and to 
satisfy the spiritual yearnings of his nature. It is a serious 
thing that State education, in our common schools and high- 
er institutions, cannot function in religion. Religious liberty 
is believed to require the prohibition and we cannot 
sacrifice religious liberty, but the prohibition on State 
education in America carries with it tremendously large 
implications. We should not decry or belittle the State 
institutions because of this limitation in teaching. It was 
not originally of their choosing, but has been placed upon 
them by the determination of America to maintain religious 
liberty. State education fills an important place. Certainly 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 173 

it does in the common schools of the country. In these we 
seek to carry out the democratic principle of the greatest 
good to the greatest number and to fit the average citizen 
for intelligent citizenship. The necessity of a great and 
rapidly growing system of higher education by the State, is 
not quite so obvious, but the arguments for it at this time 
are swaying State legislatures to ever-growing appropriations 
for the higher and specialized education of the relatively 
small number. The State school cannot answer any 
of the following questions, though they are fundamental to 
our religion, and orderly social progress or revolution and 
anarchy, are involved in the answer: Has God made a reve- 
lation to man? If so, is it found in the Bible? Who was 
Christ — a mere man or the Son of God? Is man saved by 
Christ's atonement, or by education and ethics? Was 
Luther a great Reformer or a renegade? Yet I am reliably 
informed that, by the express sanction of the State legisla- 
ture, the University of Mississippi has a chair for teaching 
Christian Evidences. One result has been that this State 
university has sent out more ministers than any other insti- 
tution of its class. If this could be consistently done by all 
State schools, it would be of untold spiritual value. But the 
logic of the American position has driven evangelicals, es- 
pecially Baptists, to oppose any measure of religious teach- 
ing by State schools. 

Phenominal growth of State colleges. Remembering the 
disability of State education to conserve the highest spiritual 
interests of students, it is a matter of concern to measure 
the influence of this education, as compared with that which 
ministers to and unfolds the spiritual nature of man, as well 
as the intellectual and physical. It has been authoritatively 



174 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

declared that in 1 895 the Christian colleges of America were 
educating about seventy-five per cent of the youth of the 
land, while the State institutions had only twenty-five per 
cent of the students. But so rapidly has the idea of State- 
controlled education forged to the front since then, that 
in 1915 it was estimated that the State colleges and uni- 
versities were training twice as many students as the cor- 
responding Christian institutions. Within the brief period 
of twenty years the proportion of American students 
trained in Christian colleges, as compared with the number 
in State colleges, had shrank to one-fourth what it had been 
at the beginning of that period. The thoughtful reader of 
these pages will hardly be able to avoid relating this sudden 
and pronounced shift in the American educational center of 
gravity to the present broadcast suspicion that treasured 
spiritual forces in American civilization are breaking down. 
Is State education neutral? I raise the question whether 
much State education has not ceased to be neutral concern- 
ing religion in America. Is it neutral as between religion and 
no religion? and is it neutral as between the different types 
of religion? Religion is the duty which man owes to God. 
But if there are instructors in State colleges and universities 
who, on the hypotheses of science and philosophy, are put- 
ting it into plastic minds of America's youth that there is 
no God, these instructors are murdering the souls of our 
future American leaders. They are teaching, under the sup- 
port of public taxation, that which subverts the accepted 
American principle of neutrality concerning religious be- 
lief, and are therefore, it is here contended, liable to be pro- 
ceeded against in the courts of the land. Most of the State 
Constitutions contain similar provisions and some of them 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 175 

are even more explicit than the national document. Many 
of them appeal to Almighty God as furnishing the ground 
upon which they propose to set up laws for safeguarding 
the common welfare of their citizens. The professor of 
learning who teaches a system the logical sequence of which 
would be to drive God out of his universe, is defying the 
fundamental laws of the land, as well as plotting treason 
against the God of nations. But what of the teacher who 
accepts God, while he throws out the Bible and the Christ 
it reveals as a vicarious atonement for sin ? He is also defying 
the American principle of State neutrality in religion. In 
the strategic position of a college or university instructor, 
dealing with the plastic minds of youth, in the most crucial 
years concerning religious belief, he and his kind have it in 
their power, humanly speaking, to turn this Christian nation 
into a nation of skeptics and infidels. There is almost ap- 
palling evidence that this anti-Christ instruction is even now 
being given in practically every State university and most of 
the State colleges in the land. The hypothesis of evolution, 
admittedly unproven, and the twin-brother destructive criti- 
cism of the Bible, the results of which have been disproven 
over and over, are being industriously taught in highly re- 
puted educational centers throughout the country. The guess 
of pseudo-science, impressively masquerading as real science, 
ranks higher with the rationalistic teacher than the "thus 
saith the Lord" of the Scriptures. 

Can anti-Christian education be stopped? Elsewhere we 
shall give attention to the humiliating fact that this false 
education has already covertly found its way into many 
institutions supported by Christian bodies as denominational 
schools. There are adequate powers in the hands of these 



176 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

bodies to deal with the offending institutions and force them 
to purge themselves of anti-Christ elements. If the Christian 
bodies are too devoid of stalwart manhood and Christly 
wisdom to exact the needed cleansing, then they are on their 
way toward a death they well merit. The writer cannot find 
it in his heart to use cushioned words in dealing with this 
spirit of apostacy, nor to apologize for plain speech. A ra- 
tionalistic teacher in a Christian school, supported by a body 
of Christ's people, is a traitor both to Christ and to the people 
who pay his salary. It may be more pleasing to some sensi- 
tive people if we shall use restrained and gentle methods in 
telling of and dealing with such men. But gentle methods 
must not be allowed to cover flabby counsels of compromise. 
It should go without saying that such a teacher should be 
counselled that he must find students elsewhere than in a 
school dedicated to the fatherhood of God and the deity and 
saviourship of Jesus Christ. Have American citizens, most 
of whom believe in God and Christianity, and in the con- 
stitutional requirement concerning religious neutrality — have 
they no power to drive the teaching of anti-Christian systems 
out of American State-controlled schools? They have the 
power, and, if necessary, they ought to use it.* 

What Baptists did in Texas. There is also another means 
of redress. The various States, rather than the nation, con- 
trol public education. The combined will of the Christian 
bodies in the States makes a power adequate to se- 
cure results in practically any State legislature. The ques- 
tion is profoundly moral and religious, and on it there is 



*The author is aware he has raised some questions concerning 
limitations on State education in religion which he has not fully 
solved. In justification he pleads the almost tragic importance of 
the theme and the fitness of challenging readers to make a fresh 
study of the problem for themselves. An extended thesis on the 
subject is impossible in this book. 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 177 

practical unity among the religious bodies. If these bodies 
will appoint committees to examine the text-books on biol- 
ogy, geology, sociology, and zoology being taught in the 
schools and colleges, with reference to whether they under- 
mine the religious belief of Christians, there is no legislature 
in the land, certainly none in the South, that will not give 
prompt and heedful attention, as will State boards of educa- 
tion. In Texas, in 1915, a single denomination, the Baptists, 
appointed a committee to inquire into this matter in their 
State. In 1918 the committee made its final report to the 
Baptist Convention. The committee found abundant evi- 
dence of anti-Christian philosophical and scientific theories 
being taught in the State schools of Texas. The State edu- 
cational authorities were approached, and quickly agreed to 
have eliminated from the text-books used in the schools any 
teaching to which the Baptist denomination raised serious 
and valid objections. There is need for similar action by 
the Christian bodies in other States, and the action should 
result in some permanent means of censoring text-books, so 
as to throw out those which teach the "sectarianism" of in- 
fidelity and atheism, which are far more injurious "sects" 
than any against which the liberalistic scholars have hitherto 
directed their guns. 

The handicap ef State schools in teaching religion. It is 
not intended to suggest here that State educational institu- 
tions have consciously set themselves to tear down Chris- 
tianity. To the contrary, some great educators in these insti- 
tutions are profoundly interested in presenting religious 
values in American education. But the best of them find 
themselves under a handicap in trying to deal with the 
needs. They have apparently not usually even felt compe- 



178 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

tent to shut off the ardor with which some of their ambitious 
young professors go about blowing out the light of Revela- 
tion with the breath of fearsome pseudo-scientific theories, 
set forth with an air of wisdom before classes of under- 
graduates. State education is growing with unprecedented 
rapidity. There are still more denominational than State 
educational institutions, but they are much smaller. Between 
1880 and 1916, American students in State colleges and 
universities increased from 10,000 to 150,000. To this 
number 100,000 more must be added who are in State 
normal schools. Since 1916, the growth has been even more 
marked. Walter S. Athearn, who gives these figures in his 
valuable book, "Religious Education and American Democ- 
racy", adds that it has been found that eighty percent of 
the students in these State institutions come from evangelical 
Christian homes. Various investigations by Baptists have 
shown that more of their boys and girls were in the State 
institutions than in their own. Shall nothing be done to 
provide for the adequate religious education of this great 
mass of students from Christian homes? The gravity of the 
problem has occurred to not a few of the presidents of State 
schools before it did to the Christian bodies from which the 
students came. Some State schools have established Bible 
chairs; others have tried other expedients. But they seem 
unable to succeed in the religious education of the students. 
The American principle makes it impossible. The best they 
can do is to touch religion at such points as find all religious 
bodies in substantial agreement. Their right to teach even 
this devitalized view of religion is seriously questioned. The 
best the State colleges can do is to co-operate with the vari- 
ous religious bodies, facilitating and encouraging efforts on 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 179 

their part to provide adequate religious teaching for their 
students attending the State colleges and universities. 

Denominational aid at State schools. This opens up a sub- 
ject too large for adequate treatment in this Chapter, though 
the theme is important and fascinating. Because of the ex- 
ceptional ability with which Professor Athearn discusses the 
problems involved and because of the splendid bibliography 
he furnishes for further research, the author could wish 
every Baptist college president, as well as our ministers in 
general, might read the work named above. But it seems 
necessary to confess on behalf of Baptists and other evan- 
gelical bodies that not even the leadership of the various 
Christian bodies has generally given the problem of religious 
education of students in State institutions the attention it 
merits. Three chief lines of effort have been suggested for 
the denominations. One is that they shall provide at their 
own expense competent professors who shall teach the Bible 
to denominational groups of students. This is being tried 
out in several places. Another is that each denomination 
shall provide a pastor for students of his faith in the various 
State institutions. A third is that each denomination, 
through Home and State Missions, shall build an adequate 
local church in the environment of the institution, and shall, 
by supplementing the salary of the pastor or employing for 
him a competent assistant for the task, make possible an 
adequate service among the students by the local church. 
The Home Mission Board has already expended several hun- 
dred thousand dollars in building adequate Baptist church 
plants in State college towns in the South. There is now a 
substantial demand among Baptist leaders for a special pas- 
toral service for such students. Texas and Georgia are ex- 



180 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

perimenting with the service and the Florida Baptist Con- 
vention of 1920 voted to enter upon it. At the North, 
the service in each line is already in successful operation. 
There is no space here even to indicate the possibilities in 
these various lines of service. But it is hoped the denomina- 
tions will not long keep out of this important field. They 
should place some of their strongest men in it. 

Blunder* of denominational colleges. Before we begin a 
chapter in the course of which we shall magnify the funda- 
mental necessity of a great program of Christian education, 
the author wishes to confess that, with all their heroism and 
devotion in this behalf, the denominational colleges have 
made some unfortunate blunders and are not yet entirely 
free from them. They blundered when they allowed them- 
selves to fight State education. They blundered in those 
instances in which they have anxiously patterned after State 
education in their courses of study. They blundered when 
they said much about the value of religious instruction in 
their colleges, and then treated religious instruction in the 
curriculum like it was a poor country cousin, to be acclaimed 
on general principles, but kept out of sight when scientific 
and philosophic company comes, with its superior style and 
impressiveness. Many denominational schools have fallen 
into this discreditable weakness. The people who support 
them do not generally know these things, but they are be- 
ginning to find them out. Some denominational colleges 
are now beginning to treat with more real respect religious 
subjects in the curriculum, while others are still slavishly 
following the ideals and courses of study made by secular 
educational authorities. It was found in seventeen denomina- 
tional colleges in Iowa that they offered fourteen courses in 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 181 

religious education and 2 1 3 in public school education. They 
trained a handful of students to teach religion and 2,000 to 
teach in the public schools. The State schools train teachers 
for public schools. These denominational schools, founded 
primarily because of religious values, were slighting religious 
training to compete with the State schools in teacher- 
training. 

Can religion be taught in colleges? To the question in 
black face type, Dr. Athearn answers that we can teach 
religion, provided we shall base our curriculum upon the 
desire to make real men and women out of students, rather 
than upon merely academic standards. The academic stan- 
dards exalt departments and original research; the social 
benefit standard considers what will make men and women 
of character and force. To mention the distinction is to 
show to which standard a really Christian education must 
inevitably give the precedence. Else it will sooner or later 
be weighed in the balances of an informed Christian opinion 
and found wanting. It may be difficult to learn how to give 
credit for the right kind of religious study and teaching, but 
it is a problem no denominational college can afford to con- 
fess it cannot solve. Such study can be thorough. It will 
be cultural and perfectly worthy of college credit. If it is 
hard to set forth on the teacher's grade book, it will yet 
show itself in a life vitalized with genuine religious purpose. 
For the denominational college, this is the primary object; 
other values are secondardy. 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VIII. 

Why is literacy of the citizen an inadequate safeguard for a 
democracy? 

What do Dr. Hatcher, Froude, Balzac, and Bishop Candler say 
about education without religion? 

On what grounds have some men opposed general education? 

Show that it is possible to have too much education when it is 
of the wrong kind. 

Show why State education must be neutral in religion. 

What figures and facts indicate a wonderful growth in secu- 
lar education? 

What facts indicate that much State education has ceased to 
be neutral in religion? 

Suggest ways in which anti-Christian teaching can be driven 
out of State institutions. 

Show that it is the separation of Church and State and not the 
educators and State schools which makes satisfactory re- 
ligious teaching impossible in those institutions. Suggest 
three ways in which religious denominations can give relig- 
ious teaching at State schools. 

Name some blunders denominational colleges have made in 
this connection. 

Show that real religious study can be properly credited in 
Christian colleges. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

Evangelism and teaching. Evangelism and the teaching 
of Christian truth are two complementary parts of the Chris- 
tian program. They cannot be disassociated without weak- 
ening its effectiveness. A Christian body that educates but 
does not evangelize will not grow in numbers, but may 
develop some noble Christians. A denomination that wins 
many souls is always creating for itself a great nurturing 
opportunity and obligation. It will grow much in numbers. 
But, if it shirks its teaching function, it will count more im- 
pressively than it weighs. It will also lose many of the con- 
verts that it won but did not feed. The record of Southern 
Baptists, for whom these lines are primarily intended, is un- 
surpassed in evangelism. It is hopeful in education, but our 
splendid evangelism has given us a vast educational task 
which we are only beginning to master. The alarming and 
rather humiliating fact is that our churches are losing to the 
world and to false faiths approximately one-third of all who 
come into their membership on a profession of faith. Evan- 
gelism alone is emotional, but lacks maturity and perma- 
nency. Education alone is dead, having no food for the spirit 
which is in man. That Christian body which can join an 
unfailing passion of evangelism most effectively to a thor- 
ough-going work of teaching, will have the greatest and best 
influence on the people of America. In Chapter VII we have 
studied evangelism and the great success of Southern Bap- 



184 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

tists as soul-winners. In Chapter VIII we have had a N'lew 
of the hopelessness of education at public expense in Amer- 
ica providing the religious education necessary in a democ- 
racy. In this final Chapter we desire to point out the neces- 
sity of strong provision in our country for Christian educa- 
tion and to suggest how Southern Baptists must relate them- 
selves to that task. 

Is Christian education narrow? A recent writer declares 
that the symbol of State education is the ballot box and its 
purpose intelligent citizenship ; that the symbol of vocational 
education is the dollar mark and its purpose competent 
workmen; that the symbol of Christian education is the 
church of Christ and its purpose Christian citizenship. Chris- 
tian bodies in America concede the necessity of vocational 
and State education. But they perceive in man something 
more than intellect and craftsmanship to be brought to per- 
fection, and are in position to render this vital service. Their 
members pay most of the tax for State education, but dare 
not do less in addition than provide high educational oppor- 
tunities in institutions of their own in which man's capacity 
for God shall be conserved and nurtured, as well as his ca- 
pacity for material production and intelligent voting. This 
double taxation, willingly incurred by the Christian citizen, 
merits the admiration of all right-thinking men. It should 
win from the exponents of secular education something 
better than a mere truce of silence. But some of these have 
set forth that denominational education is necessarily nar- 
row and untrue to the fullest aspects of truth. The Christian 
college is able to teach all the proven facts of science, as 
well as the State institutions, and also all that truth which 
lies in the realm of spirit, and which is revealed to men in 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 185 

the Scriptures. In a true sense, it is the broadest form of 
education, for it is able to deal with the whole personality, 
which is not true of any other system. It requires no great 
wisdom to perceive that the death or serious crippling of a 
really Christian education in America would be the precursor 
of anarchy and of the break down of that very democracy 
which State education is set to strengthen, but which, with- 
out the aspirations and restraints of Christian faith, cannot 
endure in this nation. 

Wealthy givers slight Christian education. There is an 
unjustifiable prejudice in certain influential quarters 
against Christian education. When Mr. Andrew Carnegie, 
the famous iron-master, had accumulated an immense for- 
tune, made possible by the prosperity and stability Christian- 
ity has brought about in this nation, he bethought himself 
concerning how he might donate some of his great gain to 
the public welfare. Discovering that teachers were poorly 
paid, Mr. Carnegie donated $10,000,000 as a permanent in- 
vested fund to help worn-out teachers. He passed by the 
opportunity to aid preachers, who are even more poorly paid 
and essential to society. He expressly excepted "sec- 
tarian" institutions from participating in the benefits of the 
fund, and said: "Many of these were once sectarian, but 
to-day are free to all men of all creeds or to none. Such are 
not to be considered sectarian now. Any such as are under 
the control of a sect or require trustees, officers, faculties 
or students to belong to any specified sect, or which impose 
any theological test, are to be excluded." Mr. Carnegie 
thus excluded from enjoying the stipend provided by his 
fund all denominational schools. Whether he intended it or 
not, he discriminated a second time against the preachers, 



186 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

and the religion which they preach, that made secure the 
vast fortune the canny Scot had capably gathered into his 
coffers. By accepted standards, Mr. Carnegie was anything 
rather than an ignorant man, but the quotation above sug- 
gests his crass ignorance on religious education in America. 
He speaks of institutions, once sectarian but now open to 
all men. With Christian colleges all about him, the shrewd 
iron-master could easily have learned that Christian 
colleges always receive "all men of all creeds or of 
none", if he had cared to give the matter his attention. It is 
more charitable to attribute the statement to a crude lack 
of information, but is perhaps more probable that Mr. Car- 
negie, who is reputed not to have believed in Christianity, 
desired to discriminate against the "sects", while at the 
same time he wilfully and unfairly attributed to them narrow 
bigotry. I have set down this instance of the prejudice of a 
wealthy American against Christian education, because it is 
a part of the situation which the friends of vital Christianity 
confront to-day. It cannot too often be affirmed that the 
security and often the very existence of the wealth of these 
men is the result of the work of Christian ministers and 
Christian colleges. Except for the work of these agencies of 
uplift, radical socialism and anarchy would surely plunder 
the strong boxes of the wealthy, the largeness of whose con- 
tents often give their utterances an influence they do not de- 
serve. But it is true that most of the largess of these men goes 
to great institutions, many of which have small need of it and 
which play religion down to a low level or reject it outright, 
while they ignore the patriotic and immeasurable service of 
those institutions which are supported by the relatively small 
gifts of the people from whom the rich men draw their 
riches. 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 187 

A challenge to wealthy Baptists. I have referred to the 
inclination of wealthy donors to turn toward secular rather 
than Christian schools with no desire to discredit them. Their 
acts speak for themselves. I have done it to put Christian 
men and women on their mettle and as a pertinent item of 
diagnosis. Why, after all, should Christian schools expect to 
get donations from other than sources definitely and intelli- 
gently Christian? Self-respect among Christian denomina- 
tions is almost infinitely more essential than donations from 
men of wealth, who neither understand nor are moved by 
the high ideals of Christian culture. In this connection, it is 
humiliating to have to recount that not a few denominational 
colleges in the South swallowed the intentional slight in the 
Carnegie provisions, and set to work to prove to that dis- 
penser of stipends that they were not sectarian ! It is enough 
to make a real Christian blush with shame. We do not com- 
ment further, except to say that the rank and file of the 
various denominations are not free from responsibility in 
connection with that unfortunate exhibition. We had left 
our Christian colleges with such a meagre support that their 
presidents were sometimes almost in despair. In sheer des- 
peration some of them must have turned with hat in hand to 
present wistful appeals to wealthy persons who care little or 
not at all for the prosperity of those institutions that are the 
treasure of the Christian bodies of America. Wealthy mem- 
bers of various Christian bodies, especially in the South, 
ought to be brought to face the above facts. We must en- 
deavor to put upon them the sense of their great opportu- 
nity and responsibility in connection with strengthening 
Christian education. It is not creditable to Southern Baptists, 
among whom are many men of wealth, that until now so 



188 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

little of this wealth has been offered to help build up our 
system of denominational education. Under God, it seems 
that the 75-Million Campaign saved our denominational 
education from shameful weakness and insufficiency in the 
South. But the gifts of the rank and file of the denomination 
did it. The big giver to Christian education among Southern 
Baptists is yet exceedingly scarce ; discreditably scarce, when 
our 3,000,000 members and vast wealth are considered. A 
wealthy New Englander rarely fails in his will to leave a 
large donation to education. Can it be possible that wealthy 
Southerners of these latter days have not sufficient vision to 
appreciate the far-reaching value of education, even when 
they are Christian men? More must be done than has been 
done to open the eyes of wealthy Baptists to what is at stake 
in denominational education. 

Christian education "makes good/' It is not surprising that 
the first colleges and universities in America were founded 
by Christian bodies. The larger number of such institutions 
are still under the direction of Christian bodies. The denomi- 
nations have founded others which have found means, when 
they "waxed fat", of wresting themselves from the control of 
those who gave them life. Such alienated institutions usually 
sell their souls for the prospect of more money. Additional 
money promises more teachers and facilities for imparting 
human learning, and the temptation has seemed too great, 
where material advantages are esteemed more highly than 
other considerations. Hard days for Christian education 
have come within the last generation. They are indirectly 
the fruit of the immense wealth which has been thrown into 
the lap of State institutions and of certain independent insti- 
tutions. This plethora gave prestige and prominence among 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 189 

the people, and many parents allow their children to flock to 
such institutions without understanding what they miss edu- 
cationally. Not only did the Christian college first dispense 
erudition in America. It still provides the larger proportion 
of the men who perform the most responsible tasks of the 
nation. Of nine supreme court judges at Washington, seven 
were educated in denominational colleges. Of twenty-seven 
presidents, nineteen were graduated from church schools. 
Of the twenty-six recognized leaders in American literature, 
eighteen studied in Christian colleges. Of the 15,518 dis- 
tinguished persons whose names are listed in a recent edition 
of "Who's Who in America", 1 1 ,035 were college graduates, 
and two-thirds of these received their education in denomi- 
national colleges. More than one-half of the names in 
"Who's Who in America", therefore, are the product of 
denominational colleges. 

Education for the "common task 1 '. The above facts indi- 
cate that the Christian college does something for men that 
makes them excel in the performance of the tasks of society 
which carry with them prominence and leadership. The pri- 
macy of the Christian college as an agency for educating the 
whole personality is the more striking when it is understood 
that no really Christian college holds out the prospect of 
prominence and worldly success as the chief result to be 
sought through education. The keynote which these insti- 
tutions continually sound as the purpose of life is service. 
By which they mean the service of the whole man in the task 
of making life better and fuller among men. To omit this 
emphasis is to train intellects to get rather than to give. The 
Christian college trains the intellect, but it also does a 
higher thing by training the will to reckon life's values in 



190 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

terms of what it shall give to help others rather than what it 
shall get for itself. Never in America have we had so im- 
pressive an exhibition of the need of this kind of education 
as we have had since the World War. Never before did so 
many seem determined to get all they can and so little moved 
by a sense of duty to others. Never did we have so many 
people who seemed determined to have the exceptional job 
and so few who were willing to do the common work of 
life. Somebody must do the poorly-paid work of love, some- 
body must dig in the ground, somebody must run the ma- 
chine in the factory and the mine, somebody must cook and 
wash dishes. Who? There seems to be a general determi- 
nation among the educated and the half-educated to get 
away from common work and into positions where one may 
boss others who shall do the hard and common work. Our 
one best hope of a cure for this disease is in Christian educa- 
tion, whose ideal is service rather than authority and the 
helping of others rather than commanding the service of 
others. 

The glory of Christian education. Christian education 
places the basis of success in the mastery of the spirit rather 
than in the mastery of others or in gain. It can render to 
the nation a service now which it never before needed so 
much, by bringing men to see that happiness and content- 
ment come from helping and serving rather than from get- 
ting and enjoying, and that the common task, performed by 
a man with a comprehending soul, is bigger than the job of 
the big boss who sees nothing but power and gain and glory 
as ends of achievement. This kind of education also makes 
the greatest men, who do more than their proportion of the 
world's big tasks. But of far more real worth, if this world, 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 191 

madly enamoured of mere bigness, would receive it, is the 
service of turning out men and women who glorify and find 
contentment in even the commonest task that serves the wel- 
fare of the race. Primacy in this service is the glory of 
Christian education. If America's wealthy men have wisdom 
half equal to their business acumen, they will give their mil- 
lions freely to make strong the denominational schools and 
colleges of the country, where this kind of education is the 
product. 

Conserves social safety. The Christian leadership of so- 
ciety, whether in statesmanship, business, education, or pro- 
fessional life, comes mainly from the denominational schools. 
Many friends of State education recognize this and under- 
stand that no other adequate source of supply for this essen- 
tial leadership has appeared or is likely to appear. We have 
seen that not leadership but service is the keynote of the 
results in Christian education. Spokesmen of Christian poli- 
cies and purposes sometimes give their entire emphasis to 
competent leadership as the object of Christian education. 
Much as such leadership is needed, there is an equal or 
greater need of a people so trained as not to need leadership 
to show them what life means. To magnify a trained lead- 
ership only is to throw oneself open to the suspicion of 
not appreciating what our Lord would have us do for the 
rank and file of men. A "leading class" is necessary, but 
only in the sense affirmed by Jesus when he said, "Whoso- 
ever would become great among you shall be your servant". 
In Christian service and in citizenship, our need is both a 
trained democracy and a trained leadership. The greatest 
danger to democracy is the "democrat". He must have such 
motives and such intelligence as shall hold him away from 



192 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

the present godless whirlpool of radical socialism and an- 
archy. The world is moving rapidly toward democracy. 
It is the business of Christianity to keep it from moving on 
past democracy to anarchy. How shall the emancipated 
millions be controlled except by inner mandates? What 
source is there of an adequate mandate, except that of 
adequate Christian faith and education? These, provide at 
once the motive and the power to save democracy from 
becoming anarchy. America needs Christian education now 
as never before to save her people from the madness of 
socialistic experiments. 

Leadership in religions work. Baptists of the South are 
now in great need of more capable ministers and trained 
Christian teachers and laymen, but we need none who shall 
seek honor and place for themselves, as did the sons of 
Zebedee, whose fleshly ambition Jesus rebuked. The recently 
acquired financial prosperity in our denominational work 
will be a temptation to some to seek leadership on a lower 
plane than that required by our Master. Each of us should 
guard against it in himself and all of us should maintain a 
spiritual atmosphere which shall make such ambition appear 
as little as it is, wherever it appears. In an earlier chapter 
we had occasion to show that the Christian college is the 
only dependable nursery for a trained ministerial supply. It 
does more than train young men who wish to study for the 
ministry. If it is faithful to the purpose of its founders and 
supporters, it maintains a Christian atmosphere which makes 
it easy and natural for the student to give the thought it 
merits to the gospel ministry as a vocation, while at the same 
time it blesses and enlarges the spiritual outlook of the entire 
student body. In the "Baptist Education Bulletin", for 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 193 

November, 1920, President C. B. Williams, of Howard Col- 
lege, declares that twenty-four percent of the students in 
Southern Baptist colleges for men are preparing for the 
ministry. He cites the instance of one State university with 
22,000 students that has furnished only one graduate for 
the ministry, and that of another with 2,000 that has fur- 
nished only three ministers. This is not merely because most 
young preachers go to denominational colleges. Many of the 
young men while in these colleges decide their life-calling. In 
the Christian colleges they frequently decide for the ministry, 
in the State school almost never. In denominational colleges 
which are living up to their opportunity and obligation many 
students who do not become ministers have developed in 
them the spirit and gifts of Christian service. This they 
seldom do in State institutions. 

Education from the pulpit. Most of this chapter has been 
devoted to scholastic education, because there is now a re- 
vival of interest in it, and because untold issues depend upon 
the support which shall be given to scholastic Christian edu- 
cation now and in the immediate future. But the educa- 
tional principle has to do with the work of the Christian 
pulpit and with the auxiliary activities of the churches and 
the missionary activities of the denomination, as well as with 
the Christian colleges. The Christian college and the evan- 
gelical pulpit are mutually dependent upon each other. As 
strong a plea can be made for creating a conscience for 
adequate educational opportunity and ability in the Christian 
pulpit, as for similar devotion to the educational institutions 
of the denominations. Indeed an adequate teaching program 
in the churches takes precedence over the Christian colleges, 
because it is the organism obviously established by our Lord 



194 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

for evangelizing and nurturing the sheep of the flock. It 
would in the end be more fatal to the maintenance of a 
Christian civilization in America to fail of adequate instruc- 
tion from the pulpit than to fail of adequate provision for 
Christian education. Spokesmen for Christian colleges would 
magnify rather than belittle the great tasks committed to 
their hands by showing their appreciation of this fact. The 
whole history of Southern Baptists and the present inade- 
quate opportunity for pulpit instruction in thousands of 
Southern Baptist pulpits, conspire to remind us that this 
primacy of the teaching function of the local church simply 
cannot be ignored, as if we may take it for granted. Still 
it does not seem necessary here to stress at length the educa- 
tional mission of the pulpit. We merely remark that the 
growing influence of rationalism and the popularity of in- 
choate religious sentimentality in the American public mind, 
are a challenge to every Christian minister to study and 
preach the doctrines of God's book with an understanding 
and determination such as we have not witnessed in the 
present generation. We must not permit our people to be 
fed on the sentimental emanations of humanitarianism. This 
diet can only produce spiritual colic. It is the minister's 
business to feed them on the revealed truth of God. If he 
does not know how, he had better be learning. If he is 
afraid of the criticism of worldly opinion, he should pray 
God to forgive him for his weakness and to make him a man. 
If he can do neither, he cannot serve the needs of our day in 
the pulpit. 

"Enlistment" education. The Enlistment work of our 
Home Mission Board is an expression of the concern of 
Baptists for adequate Christian instruction. Its underlying 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 195 

principle is education. Its purpose is to help toward an 
adequate teaching opportunity on the part of the pastors 
of many needy churches. After seven years of effort, the 
Home Mission Board has gotten most of the Southern Bap- 
tist leaders to see that it is not merely a new plan for 
money-raising. It has gotten most of our churches to see 
that the Enlistment Worker does not come to dictate and 
find fault, but, with his hat in his hand and love in his 
heart, appreciatively to serve. The State Boards have 
joined in an increasing way in the service and there are now 
eighty-five Enlistment Workers in the various States through- 
out the South, laboring almost entirely in rural districts. 
It must suffice here merely to repeat some of the figures 
which show how great a work the Enlistment service has to 
perform. Of our 25,000 Southern Baptist churches, not 
fewer than 20,000 are rural and more than 19,000 have 
preaching only one Sunday monthly, nearly always by an 
absentee pastor. The 20,000 rural churches have to serve 
them only about 5,000 pastors. Inadequate for pioneer 
days, the once-a-month, absentee-pastor system will obvi- 
ously spell ruin in hundreds of communities, if allowed to 
continue in the day of farm machinery, good roads, auto- 
mobiles and general education. Southern Baptists are rally- 
ing to the cry of this need. Their growing interest here is 
one of the most favorable omens of the present. 

Helping the preacher. Many rural preachers are still men 
without special vocational education. Their work holds 
them out in the eddies of life. They often miss an efficient 
grasp of significant currents of thought. They need 
from the denomination, to which in the mass they have ren- 
dered incalculable service, an educational contact which 



196 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

shall at least to some extent take the place of the oppor- 
tunities it has given its more fortunate sons. Enlistment 
does a great inspirational service for the churches, showing 
them how to organize for fuller and intenser service. But 
it is also due its best aid to the neglected rural preachers, 
whom denominational spokesmen are accustomed to honor 
in the mass with encomiums, but whom neither these 
spokesmen nor the denomination itself have shown an ade- 
quate purpose to understand and aid. This appears all the 
more essential when it is remembered that the rural pastor 
is the one key adequate to open the lock of spiritual re- 
sources in country churches and communities. Dr. S. Y. 
Jameson, the Superintendent of Enlistment of the Home 
Mission Board, has aroused great interest among our Bap- 
tist people by his presentations of the almost universally 
neglected case of the country preacher who has had meagre 
educational advantages. In a representative Southern 
State, Dr. Jameson has found that, of 1 000 Baptist pastors, 
only fifteen percent were college graduates or approximately 
so. Of the remaining eighty-five percent, it would be safe 
to say that three-fourths have received only a meagre and 
pitifully inadequate literary or theological training. These 
ministers have done just about all that has been done to 
build up the cause of Christ among the large and important 
section of the people served by them. Unkindly criticism 
is not what they need, and none of us is worthy to give it. 
They deserve an understanding sympathy, and the welfare 
of the cause demands that we shall through the service of 
able and sympathetic Enlistment Workers come to their 
aid. We must help them to master the situation created by 
the intense demands made on modern rural churches. This 
service deserves every encouragement. 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 197 

Sunday-schools and Woman's Mission Societies. Books 
have been written about the work of the Woman's Mis- 
sionary Union of Southern Baptists, and it is hoped others 
shall follow. There are rich spiritual values wherever the 
gracious host of our Southern Baptist women take hold 
through the Woman's Missionary Societies. They are by 
far the most vital missionary educational force of the de- 
nomination and are likely to remain so. There is here no 
purpose or opportunity to set forth in detail the value and 
nature of their work, but only to give recognition to the 
importance of their educational service. The same is to 
be said of the Sunday-schools, whose work of teaching the 
Scriptures to youth and their elders is of almost unspeak- 
able value. The vast spiritual issues that hang upon the 
adequate religious instruction of the young people in Amer- 
ican evangelical bodies are enough to focus and hold the 
undivided attention of every thoughtful Christian. Baptists 
are blessed in having a great and progressive Sunday School 
Board, whose activities looking to fuller Sunday-school 
values and further Sunday-school reach, are abreast of, if 
not ahead of, those of any other similar agency in America. 
There is now a growing demand for more Christian instruc- 
tion for the youth of American evangelical bodies than half 
an hour a week. Catholics and Jews do far more for the 
religious training of their children. Evangelical bodies have 
been only partially awake on the subject. Potent forces 
are now shaking them out of their lethargy, and we may 
confidently expect our Sunday School Board to be in the 
vanguard of agencies that shall lead to a fuller teaching of 
the Bible to American children. 



198 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

Home Board Mission Schools. A book is due to be writ- 
ten on the mission school work of the Home Mission Board, 
but a single paragraph must suffice for the present. About 
12,000 scholars are trained annually in these schools. The 
service comprises forty schools among the mountain people 
of the South, eleven among the foreign population, two in 
Cuba, and five theological teachers in Negro schools. Be- 
sides the two mission schools in Cuba, which are main- 
tained entirely by the Home Mission Board, the Board fos- 
ters a number of day-schools in Cuba by furnishing its mis- 
sionaries as teachers. These day-schools are almost entirely 
self-supporting. The system of mountain schools has the 
distinction of being the largest system which serves the 
Highlanders, though the Presbyterians, Methodists and 
others do an excellent work in this field. The Home Mis- 
sion Board mountain schools give a course of instruction 
in the Bible and in doctrine and missions which competent 
authorities have pronounced admirable. When a boy or 
girl graduates at one of these schools he knows more about 
the Bible than the average college graduate and he knows 
why he is a Baptist and how Baptists work together to 
foster the cause of Christ. The Home Mission Board in- 
vites inspection of the religious instruction done in its 
mountain schools, either by personal visitation to the schools 
or by writing for particulars Dr. Albert E. Brown, Super- 
intendent, at Asheville, North Carolina. 

Baptist colleges. Baptist education in America got its 
first impetus in the South, through the powerful advocacy 
of Dr. Richard Furman of South Carolina. Our denomina- 
tional schools were entering on a period of great prosperity 
when the Civil War came and gave them a set-back. This 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 199 

bore fruits of pain and anxiety for more than fifty years. 
Heroically throughout that long period, faithful and far- 
seeing men put their sweat and blood and prayers into the 
poorly-financed schools. Their service is known of God. 
The adequate telling of its story would thrill the people of 
our Southern Zion. It deserves a book for the telling. 
Baptists have hardly a nobler record to pass on to their 
children to inspire them to worthy living. But while these 
great souls made excellent and abundant brick without 
straw, most of the people in our denomination slept, as did 
the disciples when our Lord prayed in Gethsemane. There 
are many things about Baptists to love and take pride in. 
But their degree of concern for and appreciation of a great 
provision for Christian education has not until now been 
one of them. God gave us great souls who saw and served 
and suffered, but most of us did not see nor share in their 
vicarious service. Then came the 75-Million Campaign. 
Gradually the college men, who had for several years been 
in sorer distress than ever, saw a ray of hope rising in 
the east. They fixed longing eyes upon it. It has now be- 
come a dazzling light, shedding a radiance over their entire 
horizon. It is small wonder their gaze has been fascinated 
by the millions they long prayed for, but hardly hoped to 
see, now steadily coming into their coffers. But we should 
remember that this great provision has come from the 
counsels and decisions of trusted leaders, rather than from 
any ground-swell originating among our Baptist people. 

A really Christian education required. Baptist educational 
institutions in the South have been exceptionally free from 
certain baleful rationalistic tendencies which have latterly 
poisoned education in this country. Where a teacher has 



200 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

been discovered expounding the Bible-destroying, Christ- 
denying theories of rationalistic philosophy to Baptist boys 
and girls, the pressure of a healthy denominational senti- 
ment has in every case known to the author resulted either 
in his removal or his conversion. But our people are aware 
that there is still a possibility of their schools being poisoned 
by a teaching which will destroy the faith of their sons and 
daughters. And they are more determined than ever to 
safeguard their institutions from this catastrophe. The 
large gifts they are making to Christian education have in- 
creased their purpose to see to it that it shall really be 
Christian. There is no captious threat in their attitude. 
They honor and trust the men they have placed at the head 
of their schools, but they fear God rather than human wis- 
dom, and are determined not to have the money they give 
to honor God and Christ used to support radical teachers 
who feel called upon to dispense rationalism imbibed from 
American university teachers, who in turn got it from the 
godless educational system of Germany. The fate of Ger- 
many may not have taught American rationalistic scholars 
that God is greater than their philosophic imaginings, but 
it has taught our people. Baptists trust their educators, 
but they are determined to see to it that the virus of infidel 
pseudo-science and philosophy does not skulk into the 
schools which they have built for the service of God and 
for the preservation of Christian civilization. If our educa- 
tional leaders are wise they will give hearty recognition of 
the right of our people to know whether infidel philosophy 
is being taught in their schools. Instead of seeking to dis- 
credit honest investigation, they will invite and encourage 
it. 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 201 

Genuinely Christian atmosphere. There is another ques- 
tion Baptists are asking: If our denominational colleges 
teach nothing more than State colleges, why should we 
maintain them? An adequate reply can be easily made, 
but it is a wholesome thing that they are asking the ques- 
tion. The teachers in the Christian college are usually Chris- 
tian men and women of culture and strong personality, and 
their influence on the students is a religious appeal of pro- 
found significance. Too much importance cannot be ascribed 
to this personal influence of Christian teachers. Christian pa- 
rents who fail to consider this in their choice of a school for 
their children, are making a mistake they may deeply regret 
throughout their lives. But it becomes the more incumbent on 
our college trustees and faculties to see to it that the teachers 
they elect are not only church members, but are really and 
actively religious and show faith in Jesus Christ in their 
lives. Our theological seminaries will have no other than 
active and approved Christian men in their faculties. It is 
of equal importance that the colleges should also have 
only such teachers. Both our seminaries also have cer- 
tain doctrinal requirements, which each new professor must 
accept and to which he must affix his name, in order to 
hold a position on the faculty. Our fathers were wise in in- 
augurating that doctrinal testj Why should not our colleges 
do the same? The test should cover the inspiration of the 
Scriptures, the Deity and Virgin Birth of Christ, the Resur- 
rection, and perhaps other doctrines. If any teacher thinks 
such requirements narrow, he should be informed that they 



JThe Foreign Mission Board now requires its prospective mission- 
aries to subscribe to a statement of doctrinal fundamentals. The 
Home Mission Board does not, but that is only because the need 
has not arisen and is not likely to arise. 



202 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

are not more narrow than the revelation of God, aside from 
which the institution in which he desires to teach would not 
have been built, nor would it now be sustained for a single 
year. If he pleads that he wants absolute freedom to 
pursue truth wherever it may lead, he should be kindly in- 
formed that he is at full liberty to do that in the Christian 
college, but that he must do it as a bond-servant of Jesus 
Christ, who is God's great Revealer of Truth, who owns that 
college and for whose glory and service it was built. If 
this does not suit him, he should be kindly but very promptly 
informed that his services are no longer needed. 

Teaching Christian truth. We believe the educational 
principle is of scriptural origin. Distinctly Christian educa- 
tion is required by the same mandates as require soul-win- 
ning. But real Christian education is education in Chris- 
tian truth. We do not contend that the main function of 
the Christian college is to teach theology. But let the edu- 
cator beware who takes the position that Christian educa- 
tion is the same as that furnished by State schools, except 
that it is conducted in a Christian atmosphere. Let him 
be careful when he says a Christian college can teach all 
a State school can teach. It can teach all the State school 
ought to teach, and more. But when secular education 
essays to teach God out of His world, Christian education 
cannot teach as that. There is no religion in mathematics 
or Greek or Latin, but the Christian student needs to study 
them. There are other sciences, however, which try to 
set forth how the universe came to be and how life got 
into this world, including human life. There is Christianity 
or anti-Christianity in these themes. Many State schools 
accept the unproven hyoptheses of those scientists who affirm 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 203 

that the universe made itself by the evolution of all that now 
exists from a bit of protoplasm, which somehow emerged 
from the limbo of universal nothingness. The atheistic scien- 
tist feels competent to do away with God, but until now he 
has been too modest to tell the anxious world where that 
first bit of protoplasm came from. The Christian college 
may and should educate its students in Christian Evidences, 
through one of its strongest professors. It may and should 
prepare them for useful Christian service in the churches, 
as some compensation for all the churches do for it. It 
may have and should have educational themes that the 
secular college does not and cannot have. It should have 
initiative enough to put into its course of study those sub- 
jects which will help to justify the confidence and support 
of a trusting denomination. Most of our Baptist people 
are not pedagogic experts, but they have a very sensible 
idea as to whether a Christian college is really "making 
good" on the job they set it to perform. 

A Baptist university. The idea of a Baptist university 
in the South is not original with this author. From time to 
time it has been suggested and discussed among our most 
trusted denominational leaders. Leanness of the Baptist 
educational purse regularly thf*w cold water on every such 
discussion, until the 75-Million Campaign came to teach 
Baptist leaders how to see new visions and to dream dreams 
about building up Zion. It was rather odd that no appeal 
for a Baptist university got expression in connection with 
that campaign or in the labors of the Convention Executive 
Committee. But so many great causes, already equipped 
with zealous and expert proponents, were on hand pleading 
for liberal treatment, that no absentee cause had much 



204 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

chance. The Methodists of the South, being legally de- 
prived of Vanderbilt University, which by moral right was 
theirs, immediately set to work and built two universities, 
one in Atlanta and another in Dallas. It is understood 
that they took every possible precaution so to fix these 
new institutions as to keep their control inviolably under 
the Methodist denomination, a thing they erroneously 
thought they had done with Vanderbilt. The promptness 
with which Southern Methodists set about erecting two 
universities to compensate for the one which liberalizing 
forces had wrested from them, is one of the most heroic 
and inspiring actions in the recent religious history of 
America. There is something in it which is a tonic and a 
challenge to every other evangelical body. 

Why a university is needed. The need of a Baptist uni- 
versity grows mainly out of the fact that our colleges and 
schools feel almost compelled to secure teachers who have 
university training. At present the large majority of uni- 
versities, by competent testimony, are teaching evolution, 
rationalism and destructive criticism. Not only in theology 
do they err; they attack biblical Christianity in all of the 
scientific studies which have to do with the origin of mat- 
ter and life. The general acceptance of their teachings would 
mean the utter scrapping of the Bible, the wrecking of 
Christianity, and the domination of an impotent ethical 
code that would help to keep society deceived during such 
time as might transpire before it would hopelessly sink into 
anarchy. Baptist colleges must have able and scholarly 
teachers. Why should not Baptists build a great university, 
where men may pursue truth to its ultimate lair, but only as 
bond-servants of Christ? In a personal conversation with 



BAPTISTS AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 205 

Bishop Warren A. Candler, Chancellor of Emory University, 
the Bishop enquired anxiously of this writer if there was 
a prospect that Southern Baptists would help Methodists 
fight the onslaughts of rationalism by erecting a great uni- 
versity. He declared that Baptists and Methodists of the 
South together are strong enough to sweep back the tides 
of religious skepticism which are seeking through education 
to engulf American Christianity. The wistful interest of 
the great Methodist leader could hardly have been more 
intense if his own people had been concerned, instead of 
Baptists. Baptists have always worked from the bottom 
upward. We must continue to do so. But we must also 
prepare to take care of needs at the top. Baptist responsi- 
bility is great for the education of the masses. Its emphasis 
is only omitted here because of lack of space. But Baptists 
have millions of adherents. They are largely responsible 
for the intellectual life of the South. Baptists have obliga- 
tions at the top as well as at the bottom. It is the fervent 
hope and prayer of the author that God may soon lead 
Southern Baptists to erect at least one great university. 
There must be universities, fully equipped and in possession 
of the best results of investigation and learning, which shall 
maintain the words of God to man, as revealed in the Scrip- 
tures. Not many such still remain in America. Southern 
Baptists prize sound scholarship and are set for the spread 
of a vital Christianity throughout America and the whole 
world. The logic of the situation calls for our denomina- 
tion to build a university and to dedicate it to teach- 
ing both scientific truth and the truth revealed by God, 
after getting the service of the best legal brains in America 
to see to it that its charter shall always and indubitably 



206 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

secure it and its teachings to the control of the Southern 
Baptist Convention. 

To sum up. While many secular educators long to 
see some means of bringing the Christian dynamic 
freely into the student life of their schools, they apparently 
find themselves unable even to drive out from their pro- 
fessorships teachers who would undermine the whole basis 
of vital religion. Confronted by the challenge of this grave 
problem, the Christian bodies and colleges labor under the 
weight of heavy loads of their own, and also some weak- 
nesses, which they must overcome. The whole situation is 
poignant, almost tragic. At the present moment the forces 
of liberalism and unbelief seem to be winning their way, 
through their warped instruction to college and university 
students, into the dominance of the future intellectual life 
of America. This is true, even though leading scholars of 
the world to-day are rejecting the evolution theory, with the 
whole miserable brood of soul-destroying teachings that go 
with it. The mental opaqueness of those American pro- 
fessors who still read and teach and write books on the 
theories which came out of Germany and which destroyed 
Germany, has apparently not allowed them to accept the 
newer utterances of high scholastic authority. God pity a 
nation whose faith is the football of intellectual scholas- 
ticism, either good or bad! But it is doubly humiliating 
that American Christianity should have to suffer its youth 
to imbibe the bad scholasticism from infidel teachers! God 
give to Southern Baptists and to all other evangelical bodies 
the wisdom and sacrificial devotion to deal with this im- 
mense problem! — for on it hinges the future of America and 
of Christianity! 



QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER IX. 

Show that evangelism and education arc both necessary functions 

in Christian work. 
Show that Christian education is not narrow. 
Have wealthy givers usually fostered Christian education? 
Show how the needs of our Christian colleges are a challenge 

to wealthy Baptists. 
Show that Christian education has "made good". 
Why does Christian education fit people for common work, as 

well as for leadership? 
How does it conserve social safety? 

Show that it produces the leadership for Christian work. 
What of the educational function of the pulpit? 
Tell of the educational service rendered by the Home Mission 

Board Enlistment workers. 
What of the educational work of the W. M. U.? of the Sunday 

School Board? 
Tell of Home Board Mission School work. 
Tell of the efforts of Southern Baptists for college education. 
Show that really Christian education is required. 
What of the value of Christian atmosphere in the college? 
To what extent should Baptist colleges include the teaching of 

Christian truth? 
Why do we need a Baptist university? 
Sum up the relationship of education and American Christian 

bodies. 



208 MAKING AMERICA CHRISTIAN 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This list comprises those books consulted by the author which 
are likely to be of most use to the student who wishes to pursue 
his investigations further. 

ON CHAPTER ONE. 

Christianity and the American Commonwealth Galloway 

(Now out of print, but in many Methodist and public libraries) 

Religious Liberty in America Chas. M. Snow 

American State Papers Blakely 

Winning of Religious Liberty J. H. Crooker 

The Mission of Our Nation Jas. F. Love 

ON CHAPTERS TWO AND THREE. 

America in Ferment Paul Hawojth 

Americanism — What It Is D.J. Hill 

The Great Adventure Theodore Roosevelt 

Bolshivism John Spargo 

Rebuilding Europe in the Face of Bolshivism N. D. Hillis 

A More Christian Industrial Order H. S^ Coffin 

Liberty of Citizenship S. W. McCall 

Man or Machine — Which ? Al Priddy 

World in Ferment N. M. Butler 

Menace of Immorality J. R. Straton 

Religious Census for 1916 U. S. Census Bureau 

ON CHAPTERS FOUR AND FIVE. 

Idolatry of Science Stephen Coleridge 

Other Side of Evolution Patterson 

What About Evolution W. H. G. Thomas 

Christianity and Anti-Christianity S. J. Andrews 

The Kingdom and the Church Jesse B. Thomas 

Modern Conflict Over the Bible G. W. McPherson 

Baptist Fundamentals (Buffalo Conference Addresses, 1920) 

Contending for the Faith -. L. S. Keyser 

ON CHAPTERS SIX AND SEVEN. 

Future Leadership of the Church Mott 

Biography of William E. Hatcher E. B. Hatcher 

Memoirs of Jas. P. Boyce Broadus 

Great Revivals and the Great Republic W. A. Candler 

With Christ After the Lost L. R. Scarborough 

Sane Evangelism W. W. Hamilton 

Normal Evangelism O. O. Green 

ON CHAPTERS EIGHT AND NINE. 
Religious Education and American Democracy. . .W. S. Athearn 

Reasons for Christian Education Powhatan Jones 

Crisis in Church and College G. W. McPherson 

Christianity and Education Frederick Eby 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



<J 



029 557 517 7 



